Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
This is our weekend bloghop, the Ten Things of Thankful, started by Lizzi Rogers and sustained by 8 remarkable hostinae. Each week, bloggers are invited to share the parts of their lives that engender a feeling of thankfulness and gratitude. As a bloghop, this, the TToT has a certain…attitude that stands out in, (an area), of the blogosphere that is, how to put this elegantly, lousy with good writers, clever ideas and excellent presentation. What quality this, bloghop-that-Lizzi-created, has is ‘community’. (I know, I know, most of you are groaning and saying to each other, “‘com mune it tee’ that’s for girls!! we’re outa here” I will say, ‘well maybe but we have a Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)’. I thought that might change your minds! More about that later. So, welcome to the TToT (or, to be more accurate, welcome to one aspect of the TToT (‘one aspect of the TToT’ motto: ‘you say you want to, like, turn off the censor and write whatever you please and still have people read your Post? You’ve come to the right place‘)
Ten things…how hard can it be? This week you’ll be enjoying reading how people present their list of ‘Ten Things’, in ways as varied as the writers who create them.
1) Una. She enjoys the snow, as the photo above makes abundantly clear.
2) I am grateful for the quirk in my personality that has created in me a pleasure center built upon the act of shoveling. (no! I’m totally serious! We all know people who derive pleasure from certain less than common activities, (…besides that), hobbies like wood carving and crochetteting or maybe arranging colored sand in intricate patterns. For such people, it a source of pleasure and satisfaction that is not derived from the direct product of their efforts, in fact, I would offer that there is some innocent life experience in their childhood years that, combined with available activities and encouragement become …fun. Well, I get that from using a shovel. Could be digging a hole in summer or shoveling the lawn in winter. (as a 13 yo, I once shoveled the snow off the backyard at my house… the entire backyard. My parents were upset.) In any event, I enjoy shoveling snow, and this is good because Una is a fairly small dog (50 lbs) and the snow this week at least 24″ worth… and so I dug some paths out into the yard so she could get to a section where there are trees and the snow was not so deep.)
3) I am hypo-grateful for the fact of the snow, but I temper this with an appreciation of the fact that it’s the end of January. In years past, we’ve had storms like the one this week in December! That makes for a long winter.( added bonus Grat: we live in a fairly rural area. It’s very windy this morning, as I write this. Not only can I hear the wind howl, but I can hear it howling in the distance… you know, you hear the growing sound of the gust as it starts in the far distance, it grows, but then (this is the cool part this morning), then the gust goes after someone else…. not me! The sound grows (as the gust approaches) but sometimes you can hear it veering off before it hits the trees around your house. See? did you hear that? like a train, very close but none of the trees surround our house (and they’re Pine Tress so they make a fairly cool sound when the wind blows, what with all the needles and such)… you know that the wind found someone else to mess with…)
4) Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) one of the features of this bloghop that makes it possible for people like me to participate, nay! be a co-hostmagnissamus of the bloghop* and participate every week with barely a hint of self-consciousness (which makes up for those horrible years spent at William Golding Junior High… trouble is, there’s no way…well, no legal way I can find some of my classmates and beat them up (or have them beat up). oh well. The Book! that’s what this Gratitude Item is about! Very Simple: we have a blog hop that asks participants to write a list of the 10 Things that they are grateful for…if for reasons beyond your control (yes, Christine, like an over-active imagination encouraged by a totally stunted sense of decorum…) you are not able to produce a list of 10 Items, you may provide an alternate list. The catch is you must cite the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules) and then everyone will be watching, so it’s not what I would call a ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’
5) * BoSR(SBoR) chap 69 sec 14: anyone who uses a term like ‘nay!’ or ‘verily’ in an Item without resorting to a ‘lol’ to cover up for the essentially giggle-inducing phrase is entitled
6) (chap 60 sec 14.5) 2 free Items.
7) this weekend’s work will have to be listed as semi-hypo-grateful… not just the weather conditions, hell I spent several winters on the deck of a commercial fishing boat where the cold and the wind were such that the spray off the bow would turn into hail and sting like a bastard when it hit you in the face… no, it’s the stress of the work. Which, speaking only for myself, is pretty much all self-induced. Well, let me rephrase that, ‘the challenges of the work I do is the ostensible reason for stress, the unalterable fact of the matter is that I am responsible for allowing these reasons to be experienced as ‘stress’. Fortunately for me, one of the tools at my disposal for dealing with this is, Item 8: ‘ the Wakefield Doctrine’
8) I am grateful this week for the Wakefield Doctrine, both as a tool for my understanding of myself as well as a way to enjoy the day and the people in it.
9) You might think I would’ve taken advantage of the the BoSR/SBoR to jump right to Secret Rule 1.3, but I’m grateful for the fact that I did not. Instead, I think I’ll pimp the movie that I saw a couple of weeks ago. ‘Predestination’… with Ethan Hawke a new release on video. You should rent it this weekend. It is family friendly, but I suspect a lot of people will not enjoy it. It’s arguably the best ‘time travel paradox’ movie I have ever seen. Those of you with children… not sure which of the kids are clarks? try this movie out. (What? you want another movie to help identify the clarks in your family? say no more! ‘Slacker’ by Richard Linklater now, you put this movie on with a couch full of people and I guarantee that the scotts and the rogers will not last 5 minutes and the clarks will be sitting there mesmerized (with that laughsmile on their faces).
10) Even though there is still only rudimentary language developed to account for the benefit of identifying with other clarks, I am grateful for that simple and stupendous offshoot of this Wakefield Doctrine blog. That I can identify and identify with, other clarks is, simply, one of the top 5 significant events in my life (and yes, that is one of the three… jeez!)
* footnotes and such
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About clarkscottroger
Ditto # 10 there bro. Ditto 10. Loved today’s post so much don’t know where to begin lol
Dogs, snow and paths. There’s nothing like watching dog(s) enjoy a thing with you, because of you. The paths. My own story-ette. VA’s blizzard of ’96. Similar – coupla feet of snow, 2 black labs, one of whom was only 6 months old. Same thing. Had to shovel a path just so they could go to the bathroom. Youngest one? Wouldn’t come in! Loved being out in the snow! I have a picture of him sitting at the back patio door. Looking in with his snow beard. Asking to come in? No! Inviting us out!
So much in this post….lastly, the wind. Very cool. In Fl, when storms are approaching you can tell how close they are, how soon it will reach you just by listening to the wind. The other cool thing-driving down a road and seeing it rain up ahead. And sometimes just driving out of it.
Have a “stress free” weekend Clark. And yes, I hope that I am FRIST. Would be a nice surprice for me!
FRIST it is.
For a summer-loving person, you’ve found quite a bit of thanks around snow. Una looks like she’s having the time of her life!
yeah, strange isn’t it? (no laughing!)
As far as Una goes, she is totally enjoying herself. (One of the remarkable things about Una, in contrast to Ola and Bella before her, is that she is a smallish dog but has an incredible strength in her legs. I mean, she can jump…like standing there one minute, next minute up on the couch or the bench… no crouching or getting ready just ‘here’***’up here’)
very cool
Una sounds like Willow. I sometimes call her Tigger, because she has the capacity to bounce, in just the manner you’ve described. And Willow is a smallish dog, too.
I love to shovel. Snow especially but even dirt holes…anything. There is real satisfaction there. This winter have not been able and its a real deficit for me. Doug is not getting into the snow this year either . He usually is a lot like Una but this year i have to throw him out there. He is old … is this the real sign? hmmmmmm. Also like Denise…. cool listation but number 10 has come up a lot for me this week… struggling with my personae…
Kill the stress my friend. Let the Doctrine do it’s work eh?
Totally get the act of shovelling. Somehow, something repetitive appeals to Rogers….routine calms them!
Nice point Michelle! So maybe its the combo of my Clark and Rogerian second that keeps trying to dig to the depths!
(lol)
there is that, the exercise also
My personal quirky task is ironing. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I iron and I can zen out and get something constructive done at the same time. The first snow, which this one is in our area, is exciting to me. The one that’s expected tomorrow night into Monday. Bleh, yuck, you can have it.
HA! Comments and such.
I like sweeping leaves. I get ridiculous amounts of satisfaction from that. Even though the leaves remind me that winter’s coming.
Your high school, sir Clark – were you Ralph or Simon?
I lol-ed. But ouchily, yaknow?
Glad we synched on the BOSR – very sneaky way of getting that loophole fixed up!
We rock that BoSR/SBoR in this TToT world, don’t we?
I think anyone who can get ‘verily’ or ‘forsooth’ or ‘nay’ or other such lexical wonderments into regular conversation is a star. A star, I tell you.
My zone-out task is either washing dishes or scrubbing floors. Yup, floors. While my arthritis does not love getting down (or back up) for such task, while in process, I find myself doing hard thinking. I think it’s the “wax on/wax off” motion that does it. Miyagi was no dummy.
And as for your #10, I love it. Absolutely.
Nay, verily hath I ever seenth such a list! Dogs are crazy about the cold aren’t they. We don’t have those amazing piles of snow but my lab loves nothing more than to run with me on those cold days. His whole body smiles. Yes, January is in the books ye ole stalwart Clark. And that image of being on the fishing boat…. yes, a warm house even in the middle of the coldest winter is such a blessedth event.
Jamie
…love that that line, ‘his whole body smiles’… dogs are, indeed, perfect lifeforms!
While we don’t have snow….Our fourteen year old dog nearly bounds like a deer in the morning when its still in the forties…Once it hits sixty he is not nearly impressed.
yeah… that bounding thing!! I want to believe that it’s because they ‘know’ what the animal that left the scent looks like and are trying to spot it as they run.
William Golding Middle School? Lord of the Flies William Golding? Or, is that Goldman? Or, is Goldman The Princess Bride/Butch Cassidy? Here I am on a computer, on the Internet, and I typed all that rather than look it up.
lol
thank god for the internet… the world’s biggest used bookstore and magazine rack combined!
I love the thankfulness posts…they make me think.
…while not, by virtue of being from Y Chromia, inclined to to emotional feelings, this bloghop really is a remarkable space* each weekend an incredible variety of insights and such
I am with you on the shoveling snow. Something therapeutic about throwing around that white glittery stuff. The sound of a good howling wind is amazing. Dogs in snow make me giggle.
So grateful to learn about those Secret Virgins. They are tricky rules to remember and I love learning as we go along!
tricky but oh so attractive/alluring/tempting/exciting/oh-how-did-I-get-myself-into-this-spot!
I envy you having a proper amount of snow. It makes winter so much more worthwhile, well until the novelty wears off. Good list. I am going to have investigate this book of rules you cite!
…which is about Day 2.3! lol
Let me know what is ‘out there’ about the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)!! it’s everything you could want (…in a Book of Rules)
My dog Chief LOVED the snow. Once, he did his jump-up thing (and he was quite the jumper as well although he was 90 pounds) into what he thought was a big awesome pile of snow and it was a bush. The kind that gets trimmed so really thick. It was hilarious – huge big dog stuck in a bush that I had to help him out of because his legs just dangled down within it. Didn’t keep him from loving the other snow days though.
LOL to kid-Clark shoveling the entire back yard! Ha.
…I was happy (while shoveling) got in some trouble (for potentially killing all the grass) and felt as apart as ever
clarks and dogs are naturals
I have pictures of the girls doing the Una-activity a few weeks ago. This morning, as I was walking to kindergarten with Violet, she was making those little snowballs that were clinging to her gloves, joyful, little, lovely girl! Calvin sniffed.. I actually love shoveling as well. Feels like exercise :-) Enjoy your snowy week, Clark!
Stephanie
yeah, better though than the ones with the too-cold snow so, no matter what it just turns into a cloud of ice crystals when you attempt to throw it