Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Today is Saturday and Saturday is the beginning of the weekend, which means that it’s time of the TToT Post. This, (the Post, not the weekend or Saturday or even Today), is an exercise in gratitude, which is not all girlie and school-like as it may sound! Sure, there are mostly girl-centric writers found in the pages of the weekend bloghop, but! we got Rich Rumple and, once there was this guy, Jak, who wrote a mean Grat List, but then went off on The Quest for the Missing Consonant. What I think I’m trying to say here is that this bloghop not only has something for everyone, but it’s a good thing to do (for yourself). Further, if you’re new to this thing and worried about the pressure of producing a full 10 Items each and every week, then I have two words: ‘the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)’* The BoSR/SBoR is there to assure us that to write whatever we have within, provided the intent (of our efforts), is in keeping with the intent of this exercise. But, enough about you!! Lets hear about me and my week and things.
1) computer Solitaire. This, second only to spending 3 years sweeping the Monastery floors with one of the straw broom things and getting whacked upside the head by the Dali Lambchop (or Master Po or… Mother Superior) every week, is the most helpful tool for centering oneself and appreciating how easy it is to self-sabotage ourselves as we go through our daily effort at life. (what happens, if you play enough solitaire, is that, you will, if you are very lucky, catch yourself ‘cheating to lose’.)
2) gotta go with a standard (for these Pages): technology! To be able to see something oddly….almost startling beautiful is one thing, to be able to capture it in a photo, as I did this week (and is my ‘lead photo’) is very very gratitudisicous
3) hey! almost missed one! To (still) be able to notice the odd and the unusual and the semi-beautiful and other cool shit out there each and every day
4) the work I do allows me freedom from routine, (in exchange for intermittently, very high levels of stress), and I get to wander about, on guard for adventure or simply the occasional rabbit hole
5) (Hypo-gratitude Item): the weather. While it’s not exactly bad weather, it’s so not Summer anymore. I mourn the absence of sweat and feel of a sun-baked steering wheel in my hands and 113 degree leather seats under my…. seat. Only 9 more months ’til Summer!
6) every list has a dog in it! (Una, of course! Every Friday, we go for a 7 mile-an-hour walk and she gets to sample the world beyond her own yard)
7) shout out to the bloghops that no week would be complete without: the Gravity Challenge and the Six Sentence Story and, this week, a blast from the past: Finish the Sentence Friday!! Kristi and them are still at it and it’s a very good ‘hop. It was, in fact, the first bloghop I participated in… sort of the wait-until-no-one-was-looking-and-jump-in-the-deeper-end-of-the-pool experience (I’ll reserve the visuals for Rich and Jak and all)
8) Phyllis for not only reading my blog (not constantly, like, say me…. but occasionally, which, as we all know, is saying something. Spouses and such are normally not that…focused on the imaginary world that so many of us spend so much of our time living in.)
9) sort of hypo-gratitude but, not really… just one of those experiences that, while not enjoyable tends to, somehow be beneficial: I have this property that had a tenant who had to leave the property, (so the seller could sell it), and he had a white German Shepherd that apparently he couldn’t take with him, so he gave the dog to the abutting neighbor. That’s not such a terrible thing, (at least not for me). What is terrible, (as a result of my limited capacity for emotional response), is that when I go to inspect the property, (roughly once a week), (if he’s out) the dog will run… run up to my car and then sniff me and walk back to his (new) home. I do, in fact, apologize outloud each time, ‘sorry man, wrong human‘ and I hope that helps, but as far as I can tell, he hasn’t found the person he is waiting for. kinda sad. but it helps me improve myself, (if I’m up to it), each time he demonstrates this loyalty and hope that is not, as far as I can observe, diminished by repeated disappointment.
10) SR 1.3
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*yeah, never miss a chance at this joke…somehow it still cracks me up, every single time I use it!! go figure
About clarkscottroger
#9 is really touching. I always wonder how dogs process the loss on an owner in their heads.
We both share #8 – our loved ones have a hard time figuring how we get lost in this alternative universe – and yet they support us!
Have a good week ahead, Clark.
yeah, it was one of those (for me) painful but (potentially) beneficial occurrences that seem to lurk in the world, waiting to catch me off (emotional) guard
Sweet story in #9 – give the dog some bacon. #1 I use Bejeweled Blitz, (can’t cheat) to sort of level out my over-active mind and zone onto recentering myself. (The Dali Lambchop is great). I find #2-4 to be related and proof that the blog hop works to inspire and give one a chance to stop and smell the roses (pun intended). Have a good week, Clark.
It’s a sad thing when dogs are parted from their owners. I hope I’m never in a place where I’m forced to make that decision, it would be like abandoning a child for me. Like Val, I like Bejeweled Blitz, but usually I immerse myself in a book when I need centering.
yeah… it’s truly an awful feeling every time I (have to) go to that house, but I’m sincere (and in no small part, I’m sure, desperately seeking a way to make something good or positive from the emotional battering that it entails)
ya know?
I loves that there solitaire
yeah…computer games…(see Bejeweled 3)…are so addicting…must leave them alone. It use to be solitaire..now this crazy Bejeweled. Love that you live well in freedom from routine…I don’t do well unless I have my routine, yet I want that freedom to do something else..it’s complicated !
While there are certainly times when I crave the routine in work, I totally enjoy the lack of ‘stay here and do this’ at least in terms of not having that for all of the work day.
#2 I take it is the rose (lovely) and not the topless chick ( also lovely Im sure). #5… love this weather…sorry its not summer for you though. #s 6 and 8 also lovely in their own rights. #9 breaks my heart…
oh yeah! her! you know, the picture ended up as the ‘cover photo’ and I thought about it and decided that, somehow when I looked at it (again) it wasn’t really… what’s the old word prurient… at least imho….
#9 it’s one of those lessons that you can feel grateful and at the same time wish it never happened
I agree not purient at all… And 9…i can see your point but damn…so sad
Oh the dog looking for its owner makes me so sad:( but, at least, he does have a home. The comment about Jak looking for his missing consonant made me laugh:)
yeah… I was talking to someone about this today and the thing about (the experience) is that the sadness was mine, (while I would not suggest that the dog, in his canine way was happy with the situation) but he (the dog) had a certain acceptance (which is so another one of those concepts that seem simple enough and yet we can spend a lifetime achieving)
Oh Clark- you have such a fantastic list! That pic you caught is absolutely beautiful and surely something to be thankful for…. And although this month’s weather has been ABSOLUTELY AMAZING- (I love September because low humidity and beautiful crisp sunny days- OFTEN.) I still long for those hot steamy days of relaxed schedules and diving into the community pool. I’m not a fan of the burning hot steering wheel though. lol
9 More months… Sigh.
thank you… chance and a cell phone for the photo…. I could live with the Summer climate year ’round, but I’ve been in New England too long to think that moving to the Equator would be likely.
Nine months til summer?
Are you sure we can’t make it four months? Hehe. I mean…you know, when I get in the car, and it’s like 120 degrees inside, coming from an A/C environment, I have to sit there for a few moments and just revel in the heat.
I’m thankful for heat. HEAT!
yeah…. and when (it’s really hot) your glasses, like totally and instantly fog up? lol suppose I could install a sauna in the basement, but then I still would have to go out-doors. On the plus side, Una really enjoys the snow and cold and such.
Looove this TToT. Cheat to lose.
:-)
thanks for catching that… that is, in fact, the actual reason (and benefit) of playing that game!)
It’s odd–I don’t struggle with returning guide dog puppies to the campus for their formal training, as much as I wonder how the dog is interpreting the change. I support the Guide Dogs for the Blind organization, and know that they care deeply about the dogs and their mission. I don’t see another way to accomplish their goals than to have puppy raisers, so I try not to think too much about what the puppies’ perspectives might be.
Clearly you are doing the good (and necessary) thing to allow the dogs to attain such a high level of …development, training, whatever the word for doing good for humans. I guess, like with human children, there the pride in their (dogs or humans) accomplishments can offset the sadness of seeing them leave.
Oh, definitely. I always explain that sending a dog back is like sending a child to college, rather than attending a funeral.
surely and you have that added element of pride in the dog’s accomplishment and, I assume, a sense of satisfaction that your efforts (including the pain of seeing them leave) are all resulting in a difference in the world in a most positive of ways. (imagining the person who Willow ends up companion to, the interconnections, known and unknown…v cool)
I too like it when my husband reads my blog posts. I should have had him read it before I posted, because he afterwards caught my mistake. The word should have been crave, and my post showed grave. LOL
I can just picture that dog missing its owner. That is kind of sad.
…and ‘auto-correct’ is so not simply a benefit. Sometimes I’d rather have the word misspelled than the wrong word (correctly spelled) put in where the ‘spellcheck’ will pass on… at least I’m not in the habit of trysting spell check….
(lol… plus I like to make words up and that is never acceptable to the spellcheck)
Makes me very happy always to know the Hub reads my stuff. Even better is when he offers a compliment BEFORE I ask “what did you think?”
Poor dog…that really is sad. And I’m not even really a dog person. It’s amazing how attached animals are to their owners – and vice versa.
…yeah, have you gotten a ‘why I never knew that about you/ I had no idea you felt that way?’ after a they (spouse) read a Post? lol
dogs are the best of all lifeforms