Diner dash

I’m a diner junkie. No chain restaurants for me. I don’t need fancy cappachino or specialty breads. I can live without sushi and quail egg omelettes. I’m an old fashioned mug of joe and two eggs over easy with sides of bacon and homefries for breakfast kind of girl. If the parking lot’s full of BMWs then I’ll pass right on by but if the parking lot’s full of semis and pick ups then I know the food has to be good.

Seat myself, not a problem. I’ll even fetch my own menu as I locate the best booth by the window. It has to be a booth, the kind of booth with naugahyde seats that leave a welt in the summer time when you go to stand up. God only knows what I’d find if I put my hand in the crack between back and bottom. I know I’m not brave enough to look. For some reason everything tastes better when I’m sitting in a booth at a diner.

My coffee’s delivered with a smile and a “need a minute honey?” which of course I do. I don’t mind being called “honey” or “sweety” by my waitress, I’m not sure why because I find it very annoying from other strangers but I know that she says it from  kindness and I’m okay with that.  She’s a nice lady, I’ve met her before. She knew I wanted my coffee and brought it without asking. She’s older than me, not so thin, and not so perfectly put together but she knows her stuff and I’m guessing she could do her job without even looking, she’s done it so long.

I scan through my menu. Cracked and peeling in the corners with a grease spotted list of specials paperclipped in.  Stuffed peppers, baked chicken and beef vegetable is soup-of-the day.

While I sip my coffee I look around to see what everyone else is having. The burgers look good but so does the stew and I wouldn’t even mind an openfaced roastbeef on white with a little extra gravy. But then she walks by with her tray held up high and I smell the unmistakable smell of mealoaf and know exactly what I’m going to have. Nothing fancy just old fashioned meatloaf and gravy. Food that won’t leave me hungry in an hour. Who needs a diet? Salads are for rabbits. I’ll have mashed potatos and gravy and maybe some corn to fool my brain into thinking it’s all good for me. Are onion rings veggies? I tend to think they are. Corn I can have at home, homemade onion rings are just what I need.

The important things covered, it’s time to settle in and look around. I glance at the pick ups in the parking lot, American made…mostly. A couple of dogs looking at their windshields wag their tails hopefully as our eyes meet then settle back down for their nap.

I look at the counter and watch as the stools fill up with men on their lunch breaks or just heading home from their shift at the plant. They nod at each other and talk about the weather and who got a ten point buck last fall. They discuss football and children and who just got laid off. Occasionally they see me watching and nod my way kindly. I’ve been here before but they don’t know my name so we just smile and nod.

There’s an old football team schedule on the wall, it’s been there awhile but it still hangs above the cash register along with photos and crayon drawings colored by children probably now all grown up with kids of their own.

The waitress brings me my food and it’s as good as expected. Nothing fancy, just good food. We eat quietly savoring it while it’s still hot. She comes by again, refills my coffee, asks me how it all was and if I think I might have room left for pie. I really don’t but I order some anyway because I’ve been watching it spin in lazy circles in the cooler. It’s almost a shame when it’s time to leave.

I like the world inside a diner. It’s a peaceful place. Just regular people, not a designer anything to be seen. A step back into time in a way. Good food, good people, good conversation. Regular people with regular problems living regular lives. Some of them born, raised, and some day going to die in the same area and not minding it one bit. I go for the food but leave with a comfortable feeling of home.  Big citys are nice for the glitz and the lights but when it’s dinner time give me an old fashioned small town restaurant with pick ups in the parking lot.

My name is Tia and I’m a diner junkie and I know I’ll be back there again soon and maybe next time I will have the stew….

I miss my dog

and it’s been bothering me quite a bit. I moved without her a couple months back knowing I’d never see her again. To see her would be cruel I think. Entering her world again just to leave a few hours later and leave her waiting by the door for me to return. A bit selfish too, I don’t think I could do it, too much pain for both of us.

I like to look back and think I did the noble thing, Leaving her in the home she knew with the yard she’d sniffed out daily for the eleven years we loved her. I miss her for all my complaining about her. She and I were close, we spent every day together and we knew each others faults. She was my friend. Some people don’t think of pets as parts of the family but I do.

 There were days she was my only friend. We walked the canal together when my heart was broken, we shared my bed on winter nights, We faced each morning out on the deck together.  It’s funny, I took it a little hard when my kids grew up and no longer needed me so much, I handled turning forty with as much grace as I could muster but saying goodbye to Puppy has me in a funk that grows every day. I miss that old beast. She was a part of me.

I’ve always had a pet. Usually a cat because my parents wouldn’t allow me a dog and when I was out on my own and the time came for me to get a dog I had two small children to leash, no time for a dog. I finally got one, Norm. Named after Norm on Cheers, Norm was a pure bred cocker spaniel. We loved Norm even though he had the ability to snore and fart at the same time. But he was stolen and by the time we healed the boys were too involved in baseball, Boy Scouts, soccer, and other boyish activities to get another dog.  It wouldn’t be fair. Cats can stay home alone but dogs need plenty of company.

 

Then Puppy came into our lives as a …puppy. Her real name was Ty, short for Tchaikovsky. She was a ball of fur and energy and when she wasn’t biting people she kind of grew on you. Ty turned into Puppy and she became one of us. Because I worked at home she and I formed a bond. She annoyed the snot out of me most of the time but no matter where I was or what I did she was right there with me. When I started doing furniture she’d lie there in the sun watching me work only disappearing under the deck when I pulled out the sanders. She wasn’t so fond of things like that. We’d chase frogs, blow frozen bubbles, and belly rubbing was a command not a treat.  It was hard to be mad at her, even when she  used the litter box as a buffet table or left me gifts of dead moles and mice in my slippers. 

She was a part of me and I miss her so much it hurts. But she’s an old girl and she can’t do wooden floors or be stuck inside a house because of a non fenced in yard. Her hips can’t do stairs and she is better off where she is. It was a touch choice but the best one.  I like to think she misses me too but not too much because I never want her sad. I know she’s fat and happy and spoiled rotten and I know she’ll enjoy her days chasing those damn squirrels on the fence.

Both Puppy and that stupid squirrel know she’ll never catch it but every day it waited for her and then ran the length of the fence back to the pine trees while she raced alongside and barked. One time she met it face to face under the bird feeder and I’m not sure who was more confused that old dog or that stupid squirrel. It was a Sam and Ralph moment and after that they’d say hello as the punched into a new day and the chasing was on. At the end of the day they went off to start again the next day. “Morning Sam” “Morning Ralph”

 

I’ve talked before about not being so sure there’s a heaven for us humans but I have no doubt there’s one for pets. A place where old dogs can chase squirrels and nip at people, where they can bark at mailmen and put dubious gifts in slippers for their pet humans to find. If there is a heaven for us humans I know Puppy and I will have a chance to walk the canal path and sit out on the deck and enjoy the sunrise.  I’d give anything to have the chance to sit outside in the winter and watch that crazy dog of mine jump and twist in the air trying to catch frozen bubbles and maybe play a game of fetch on a summer night, even though our games always turned into me throwing and fetching while she ran with me

and pretended she was playing too. I’ll miss sitting outside with her on Saturday mornings listening to the marching band practicing a town over. Even though there were miles between us and the school, we could hear it softly in the distance. We’d listen to the football games at the HS and college  in the Fall and at Christmas we’d lie on the floor and look at the Christmas tree lights while we waited for the boys to get home from wrestling practice.  

I am a lucky woman, I had a friend like Puppy and I’m blessed for having known her. I’m going to think she loves me too and every once in a while she thinks about me. And if God’s feeling kindly toward me as I end my days I really hope she and I get to meet up someday, me with my camera in my hand and her with her leash in her mouth waiting to walk the canals and spend some time together.

 

lessons learned

I don’t usually talk about news stories. But there’s one I’ve followed and it’s on my mind. Caylee Anthony was a little girl who one day went missing. I know that happens way to often in our world but she went missing and for thirty one days no one reported her gone. I’ll give a tiny bit of credit to her grandparents and uncle and say they may not have known she was truely gone but her mother knew and in the time this tiny life was missing, her mother went out, slept over at her boyfriend’s, got a tattoo, and broke a few laws along the way.  Why this one little girl caught my attention is simple, when she went missing and was finally reported missing, I was starting to count down to the birth of my granddaughter. So my heart broke for the grandparents. Them losing something that I didn’t even understand having yet.

But as I’ve followed this case it’s confused me. Made me ask some questions of myself.

Do I love my children enough to lie for them or do I love them so much that I wouldn’t?

I think it’s harder to love them so much you won’t cover for them or lie for them. 

It’s easy for me to sit here smug, looking into someone esle’s disfunction. I can pick apart the pieces of their lives and then tell them I would never or could never…

I don’t think the Anthonys set out to create a monster, I don’t think they understand now how it happened. But what they did do is forget the boundries between child and parent. They forgot that sometimes we have to let our children face what they’ve done and we have to do it from the begining. When you never hold your children responsible for their words and their actions and when you cover for them or clean up their messes time after time, you don’t teach them you love them or how to be adults.

When you do those things, you let them grow up thinking they can do whatever they want and they don’t understand how to think of  others, not even when “others” are a tiny two year old child.

I don’t think the Anthonys saw anything wrong with covering Casey’s early messes. I know there were a couple times I fought with myself over excusing away my son’s behaviors. And I lost a couple of those fights too. I said “he would never” or “the teacher must just not like him” but I knew that wasn’t it and I stopped myself fast. My boys may have been my little angels but they weren’t that angelic and I knew it. It’s so easy to make excuses, to blame something for your child’s faults. The other kids were bad influences, he forgot he had that gum in his hand. She wasn’t trying to be mean, they must’ve misunderstood.  Excuses are a dime a dozen and I had plenty of change to buy some but I had to make myself put that change away and let my children take the fall for what they’d done (or not done).

I wanted my sons to grow up and be men I’d want to know. To have them become people I’d want as neighbors.  That’s my advice to young parents like my son. Raise your children to be people you’d want as neighbors.  Tell them “no” and teach them early on to respect you and others. Punish them when they need it, hug them when they don’t know they need it. Don’t worry about being their best friend, that’s what their peers are for. Be a parent. Don’t be their overlord or their owner.

I’m not saying  the Anthonys could have altered what their daughter has done. Not my place to say that but they raised a child who never grew up. She never learned “no” and she never learned bounderies. She took what she wanted be it money from her best friend, her own grandparents, or her baby daughter’s piggy bank… she lied about who she was, what she did, and who she did it with. She hurt people on “whim” she made herself more important than anyone else and they let her. Time after time her behavior screamed out for help and they made excuses and covered for her. And now, they still lie for her. They lie to the police, to the FBI, to the media, to us, and to themselves. They give their child their version of love and in return she gives them disrepect and thinly veiled hatred. The child they thought they loved so much that they fixed all her mistakes, took away something else they loved.

 

Look how their story is ending, a dead grandchild, an incarcerated daughter, a lifetime of hell for them.  They may face charges themselves. They’ve lost their friends and their family. They’ve lost their self respect and the respect of everyone. They made this mess and they nuured what they thought was a flower but their flower turned out to be poison ivy and everything their daughter touched is now destroyed. They will never face another day without pain and tears and they will never know exactly why but I bet they l0ok back and realize the whole path could’ve veered differently had they only said “no” and meant it.

I have a granddaughter now. They do not. My son and I have discussed this case often and I must’ve done something right because he wants to be the kind of parent who raises his daughter right by saying no and not making excuses and I have no doubt that the child he and Katie raise will be the kind of person I’d like as a neighbor.

 

We can’t change what we see in the news. We can talk about it, like I do on IS. We can watch Nancy Grace or Geraldo although I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone watches Geraldo and  I’m not allowed to watch Nancy Grace because it makes me yell at the tv. We can gossip over these people at work or at play but unless we take their lessons to heart someday we’ll be reading about another case, another family, another trgedy. 

I’m a grandparent now, a role I take seriously. But I was a mother first and the hardest part of parenting is the part I’m glad I did.

If you haven’t read about Casey Anthony, please do. And if you’re the praying sort please offer up a prayer for her parents. They still don’t understand and when they do it will destroy them. They thought they loved their daughter so much that they covered for her, but they needed to love her enough to let her fall.

it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long but I’ve been told it has been. I’ll be returning to my keybord soon with new thoughts and new stories. Life has a way of shaking things up and you can consider me well shaken. Some things I’ll share, some I won’t but all things considered, life is good because I’m alive and I’m blessed with the people I love and those who love me.

all I’m missing is a dog and I think that’s where

I’ll be picking up my tail, or tale depending on the way the story goes.