Bullies

Yesterday I came to an agreement with Smith, yep he's volunteered (more like took his own life in his hands) to be my editor.  Like any good editor, we talked about how my voice is unique and where my strengths are as a writer.  He says that I've got "the gift", so I've got to write.  He also says I should believe in myself more, and I agree with him, but the truth is, I really don't know how, so I'll just play it as run and figure it out along the way.

However Smith, in his great writer's wisdom and Hephaestus-like wordsmithing skills, let me know that my strength is in my storytelling; how I can spin a yarn with how I phrase things.  But, here's the kicker, I don't have nearly enough content to go through to widdle down into a volume of good things, so back to my keyboard I go.  Smith also said one other thing that set me on edge: that I need to write about the tougher subjects, namely all of the pain and hurt I've been through.  Here's the problem with that - I don't like wallowing in my past, I'm over it, I'm above it, I am not the guest of honor at my own personal pity party; but I can hear Smith in my head saying "You have to write about all of that stuff to give your humor context and give us a reason to cheer for you at the end."

That's the hard part, isn't it?  It's reliving all of those horrible moments, the ones that will make you shake, cry and give the overwhelming urge to scream out, "WHY?"  But it's the hard moments, the painful words and the situations of the past that make you just want to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over your head and wish with all your heart you were someone else.  Those painful things are why I have PTSD, why I struggle every day with arrested development and when the truth finally is told, why I am who I am and why I have my "unique voice" that my editor thinks is bestseller-worthy.

So today I sit at my keyboard knowing what I have to write about and wanting to turn around and run in the other direction.  The nausea is overwhelming, but the whole reason for sitting down and doing anything like this is to make sure that someone else, who has been through the same things, knows that they're not all alone in the darkness, that the pain that they are feeling isn't just restricted solely to them and that someone else on this sometimes detestable rock understands where they are coming from.  Smith and I agreed on one thing, the point of all of this is to remind everyone that no matter how beat down we are, we can all rise from the ashes with an incredible amount of nutritional value.

Doc Cat once told me that I'm far too lenient on the people who have hurt me, so today, oh yeah, those folks are going to get what's coming to them because personally, if I don't get to forget what they've done because I have to live through it day after day because of the PTSD and anxiety they so kindly gifted me with, they're most certainly don't get to be forgiven.  On top of that, for all of the folks that are cheering for me, we're going to jerk pants down around ankles and I'm going to give you the honor of letting you break out your two by fours and go to town on them. Call it stress relief, or by all means call it justice, we're going to get up on our horse and run those suckers into the ground and put a hurt on the lot of them.

That's right folks, bullies are the topic of the day.

My first experience of getting bullied goes way back.  Jeez, trying to remember the first time I was bullied is a feat in itself because I honestly don't remember a day from childhood where I wasn't.  To be honest, I guess I was a target from the get go...pretty, smart, sharp as a tack...what bully doesn't hone in on things like that?

But let's dissect bullies for a moment:  What is a bully?

The Mirram-Webster dictionary defines a bully as: a blustering browbeating person; especially : one habitually cruel to others who are weaker.

I'm going to differ with Mr. Mirram on one point, bullies don't just target those who are weaker, they target people who they feel inferior to.  Come on, admit it, how many attractive bullies have you ever seen?  How many mental giants do you know that bully people?  That's right, not many.  Oh yes, Stephen Hawking is really going to get out of his wheelchair and really put the hurt on you.  I truly believe that bullies are born from individuals who have massive and I mean MASSIVE inferiority complexes.  It's not my fault someone feels stupid, that's their burden to carry, not mine. When someone who doubts their intelligence perceives someone is smarter than they are and they feel threatened, they lash out, doing anything and everything to beat the smarter person down.  There are tons of reasons why bullies do what they do.  Jealousy has got to be one of the biggest motivators.  Tell me, how many ugly girls get together and beat on a pretty girl when the pretty girl is in the minority?   Mmmhmmm, don't tell me nothing I don't know because I was the pretty girl getting the crap kicked out of her by a bunch of jealous cows.

But, as Smith would tell me, "Tell the story", so here we go.

I grew up in a little dirt-speck of a town, not anything as beautiful or cosmopolitan as say a city like Montreal or Las Vegas.  Yep, I grew up just 22 miles north of San Antonio, a beautiful town called New Braunfels, which is nestled deep in the Texas Hill Country.  Back in the day, the population was only about 22,000 people, so up against a city like Las Vegas with its millions of inhabitants, you can say it's a whole other world.  The city itself is beautiful, rolling hills, the scent of Mountain Laurel wafting on the breeze, Bluebonnets lining the roadside and folks kind enough to give a wave when you passed them on the street.  But, even if the town is beautiful, in the 70's and 80's, some of the kids I grew up with weren't beautiful, not by any stretch of the imagination.  And I'm not talking about physical beauty for the most part, I'm talking about "immortal souls" here.  Texas may produce Miss America seven times out of ten, but what's underneath that is a whole other story.  At this point I can only say that there is a special place in hell reserved for some of the kids I grew up with.

From the moment I was born, my sister has showered me with gifts, for the most part the gifts she has given me over the last 40 years have been worth more than money could ever buy.  The biggest gift she gave me is the gift of literacy. Because she's four years older, from the very beginning she made it her mission to share with me everything she had.  She taught me how to read, and she taught me how to write, giving me her books to learn from so we learned at the same pace.  I remember laying on my parent's bed with the flu when I was very little, no more than three years old, and her coming in with her writing books, giving me the dotted lines to trace, which resulted in me writing script and cursive by the time I was four and was able to crack open an encyclopedia and read from it and understand what the words meant.  Nan really did forge the way for me to be so smart, what she learned, I learned at the exact same time.  Without her, I would have developed much later.

I have to say, Nan was very fortunate to grow up in New Braunfels, she fit right in and everyone loved her.  She was beautiful, popular and very well dressed.  My sister back then was the sun, moon and stars to me (still is) and I was very fortunate, she took me everywhere with her.  Where you wanted one, you got two because I was Nan's ever-constant shadow and little mascot.  To be honest, I grew up with her.  Her friends were my friends, they looked after me and I got to go do "big kid" things before all of the others.  Nan really did put me way ahead of the game.

Nan could have never guessed that all of her good intentions, love and care would put me at odds with the rest of the kids my own age who didn't have sisters who were teaching them from the start.  I have to say, all of the smarts I have are purely due to my sister making sure I was learning from birth.  I remember sitting long hours at the kitchen table listening to Nan studying and doing her homework with my Mom. I learned by osmosis, they talked about it, I heard it then learned from it.  That was the reason I was using the word "abundant" when I was 8-years-old;  I heard it, I asked what it meant, got slugged by Nan for asking Dad what it meant (in which you know that my Dad is much like the dad in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, ask him the definition to a word and you get a 30-minute dissertation), and finally ended up with a dictionary in my lap and finding out what it meant.  But, no one ever bothers to tell you that if you hear it at home, you're not supposed to repeat it at school.  While other kids were bringing curse words to school from home, I was bringing a much larger vocabulary, I started using the big words I heard at home in casual conversation at school.  While the other kids were swearing their heads off, I was saying their swearing had become "abundant".  It was quite enough.  (In my head I was thinking, "You're smarter than that, use better words!)    You know what is coming...you have to.

When you go to primary and secondary schools and junior high with children who have parents who are blue collar, farm-hands, ranchers and so on, and those kids hang out with the not-so-educated ranch hands instead of being parented by highly intelligent folks, their vocabularies aren't going to be filled early on with words that make future word-smiths. It stays about eighth grade reading level (which I am convinced it has remained for the entirety of their lives) and that's the best you can hope for; before that, they're mono-syllabic, and if you get into more complex words, well, their minds just, for lack of a better term, lock up.  Since they couldn't comprehend it, it automatically became a threat.  Yeah, I'm serious, that's how their small minds worked.  Honestly, I have a lot of trouble with people who don't stop to ask "What does that mean?"  Human curiosity and the ability to ask questions to expand knowledge is one of the greatest gifts we are ever given and I have never in my life ever been afraid to stop and ask for clarification about what I don't understand.

No no, I didn't get, "Hey Sheri, what does that mean?"  Instead, I got made fun of and bullied because my advanced vocabulary unintentionally made them feel stupid.  I got looked at like I was from the moon, the kids stopped talking to me and treated me like I was dirt under their shoes. I was exiled early on because when I spoke, words they didn't understand came pouring from my mouth.  I might as well have been speaking Greek for the pushes, shoves, whispers, rumors, screamed insults, innuendo, pointed fingers, snubs and humliation I received.

The phrase "audience appropriate" hadn't been introduced to me yet, I didn't know that I had to actually (and I hate, hate, hate that I have to say it like this...) talk down to them so they could understand me.  If someone had told me, "Hey, remember, they don't know the words you do, so speak their language," I might have fared better, but at 8-years-old, what do you do when your education is actually four years ahead?  There is nothing you can do except be at the mercy of ignorant fops, and oh did I pay for being smart.  The teachers understood me just fine, but at that point you could honestly say I was doomed.

The next ten years would be no different.  Think about that for a minute.  Ten YEARS.  Imagine what you were doing on this exact day in 2002, now imagine being bullied the ENTIRE time, from that exact moment ten years ago to today.  Don't limit it to just one place either.  Imagine walking into more of it when you got home from being bullied all day from where ever you were.  Imagine that it did not stop from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to sleep.  Brings you to your knees, doesn't it?   Personally, it brings tears to my eyes and makes me want to throw up.   But you're just getting a taste of it.  Imagine having to live it like I did, every single day, no protector, no guardian.  It's you taking it full force, every single day, blow upon blow, hateful word upon hateful word.   Try just for a moment to imagine standing up against that.  You can't.   I got hammered into the ground to the point where I would watch the kids down on the playground through the window of a third-floor secluded classroom, high and far away from everyone else just so I could eat my brown-bag lunch every day in a moment of fleeting peace.  Going to the school cafeteria would be an exercise in futility, getting food and insults thrown my way.  It felt like I couldn't even breathe without getting ridiculed in one form or another.

After about five years of it, my parents finally started seeing what was going on.  They went to the school, they talked to the teachers, they went to the other parents and it only got worse.  The more the kids got disciplined for bullying me, the worse it got.

In a situation like that, no one is to blame.  Who are you going to crucify?  Me for listening, learning and having, according to the bullies, the audacity to learn beyond my years?  Was I so horrible for being that advanced?  Did that make me a bad person, detestable to the human eye for just wanting one moment of acceptance?  Was I so bad that no one wanted me around just because I was pretty and smart?  Did I deserve all of the name-calling, the rumor mill that churned out endless lies and the persecution and hell that was walking down a school hallway just to get to class?

I do have to give a few kids a break here, I did have some friends, but they were in passing and only held up long enough until the peer pressure got too much for them.

But then that was just getting through to junior high and into high school.

I'll give you a break for a moment so you can go get sick or whatever you need to do.  Enraged is how you should feel around now, if you were me.  That I was trapped in a world where there wasn't much to hold onto, it's not surprising that I took solace in my room at home with my computer and my video games.

A few of the kids who bullied me will stand up right around now and try to excuse their actions by saying I brought what happened onto myself, because something inside of me snapped, I was ready to sell my soul for one moment of their acceptance.  That would be true.  No one bothered to tell me back then that I didn't need their acceptance, that the only thing I really needed to do was go to class, get good grades and just get through it so I can be where I am now.  But, that would have been of absolutely no use when I was sitting in the middle of it with no end in sight.

There were other things outside of school that just added to the cycle.  Being told you are worthless every day on the way to school doesn't help, that being pretty on the outside just meant that I was ugly on the inside... I was being programmed to fail, programmed to sit and take the endless waves of abuse piled upon me, so much so that my personal growth, coping mechanisms and human survival instincts would be worn down to non-existence.  (And people wonder why I don't believe in myself.  Put bluntly, no one else ever did during those long hard years, so why should I?)

High school was no better, it started off with some twit thinking that sexism was ok when he decided to put "Perky" on the band member recognition flier taped to my locker.  All band members got one, but mine just had to have a sexist remark because he thought it was ok to further humiliate me.  As you can guess, he was referring to my breasts.  Why some teacher didn't beat the snot out of him for that, I'll never know, but as you can guess, my freshman-year breasts were a hot topic to all of the band section leaders and thereby the entire student body of over a thousand students, resulting in a nickname they called me openly without any adult intervention.  To the guy who did that, you owe me a huge apology, you not only fueled the bullies and further the belief that made them think all the crap they did was acceptable, you made things a hundred times worse.  This is where I grab you painfully by the ear and say, "That's not okay."

There are other stories about me getting bullied that I'm not ready to write about yet.  Sorry Smith, I'm done for today.  We'll have to cover the Anti-Christ himself another day, the one kid who did the most damage and his compliment of cohorts that made every day worse than the one before.  I just don't have the heart to get to him yet because going through that humiliation once was enough, going through it again will take having someone hold my hand while we tackle it along with a mountain of Kleenex.  I'm short of breath and reaching for my anxiety meds just thinking about it.  Oh, and don't even get twisted, I'm pissed.  He'll get his day, oh boy is he going to get it.  But we'll tackle him in our own good time.  He'll get his day because I want the whole world to look at him and for the rest of his life I want his name to be synonymous with the not-so-kind phrases he alone has helped me hear every day for the last 27 years.  Oh, that SOB is going to get his pants jerked down around his ankles, then I'm going to let all of my good friends, supporters and my legions of Sophomores loose on him.  Yep, I don't think he ever figured that eventually my friends and readers, who would do anything to protect me, would literally cover the entire planet.  Hell, even my editor wants to take a baseball bat to him.  To him we only have one thing to say: Sucker, you messed with the wrong girl.

I really have a lot of unexpressed anger about what happened to me.  I would love to be able to let all of the bullies who made my life such hell for so long have a taste of what it is like to go through what they put me through.  I would love nothing more for them to lose as many nights sleep as I did over it.   I would love for them to experience someone hammering them into the ground over a nickname;  I would love to see them even try to live with the anxiety I do and fully understanding that their ignorant and unforgivable actions damaged someone for the rest of their life.  I sure as to hell hope they're proud of themselves.  I only wish I could give them the gift of living with my PTSD for a single day so they understand how their actions will be with me for the rest of my life.  See, that's the thing about arrested development, you can't let things go even if you try every day for the rest of your life...they stay with you FOREVER and as much as you'd like to put them behind you, you can't.  On a typical day for me I can still physically hear the taunts and the insults.

At the end of the day, I can only look at the people that bullied me with disgust, disdain and pity and say, "Way to go dude.  Grats for being such a f-up."  Oh look at the big bad bully, oh they're so threatening with their ignorance...forgive me for being rude, but you'll have to forgive me for laughing at you and your pathetic excuse for claiming superiority.  Geez, I just feel so bad that I actually care about someone else's feelings and that I'm not only in the top 10% of brilliant individuals but make sure I lift up everyone around me and think of myself last, always giving more than I take.  I know, that just makes me worth calling me all of those names!  It's so hard to look in the mirror and see all of your shortcomings, isn't it?  Forgive my cynicism...I'm over the fact that I had a group of malicious a-holes make my life a living hell for so long.

Now we're at the point where I get to say it is time to dispense some poetic justice.  They were right to fear and be jealous of me because now I'm pissed and I'm coming for them full force, blazing intellect and school of hard knocks education right alongside me.  No no, I'm not that beat down kid anymore.  I'm Phi Kappa Phi, I'm Dean's List Honors and I'm invited to Kappa Tau Alpha, the Journalism Honors society.  And you know what that means?  I'm a writer, but I'm not just that.  I'm a bad-ass that is now in a position and has the weaponry to truly bring the pain.  No no, they've not seen pain until I take my vengeance out on them on a global scale.   I'm beautiful, I'm brilliant and I'm the hottest thing on two feet with a literary property just waiting to cut loose. They were right to be afraid because now I'm able, along with my legion of supporters, to beat the ever lovin' shit out of them for very justified reasons.  There is something to be said for being smart.  Had those bullies been smart enough to leave well enough alone, we wouldn't be having this conversation...but they weren't very smart, were they?  The proof is in the pudding and the one thing I've learned is that every dog has its day... and this one, well she's got long, sharp teeth and a very voracious appetite just waiting to chow down. *giggle*

I've always been a nerd and I love being one.  I love being able to handle lines of code on a computer screen and produce a technological miracle.  I love being able to solve problems quickly and I most certainly love the fact that I'm smarter than the average bear.  There's nothing wrong with being thrilled that I can solve problems quickly and efficiently for the people I love around me!  That's sharing good, wholesome nutritional value and playing to my strengths, not fodder for some IQ-challenged moron who thinks that they have to put me down just because they decided to put themselves in a situation that made them regret not studying harder.

I may be a wise fool and I might be a lot of other things, but you know what, I have a voice.  I have the gift of story telling.  I am the voice of the bullied, and I will see justice done for every single one of us who have been put under a boot heel because some insignificant moron with a pitiful education and no common sense didn't make their words kind, gentle and tasteful... oh, to hell with kind, gentle and tasteful...the bullies had their day to have their say, now it's ours.

Put on your bibs bullies...it's time for you to step up to the table because the Sophomores of the world are about to make you eat every single last taunt, insult and injustice you ever visited on us. You should have thought twice before a single unkind, crass or bitter word escaped your lips, because now you're going to eat them.  As I said, there is a special place in hell reserved just for you...

As Andy Garcia said in the film Ocean's Eleven, "Run and hide, asshole. Run and hide. [...] Because I want my people to find you, and when they do, rest assured we are not going to hand you over to the police. So my advice to you again is this: run and hide. That is all that I ask." 

For all the bullies out there, this one goes to out to you...because we're coming.  Pink Floyd's "Run."

Facing the hard truths about myself...

We all can agree that I've met practically every type of life form on the planet, from the depths of the ocean to what flies on wings.  But, I had really thought I had met all kinds of men in my travels through life.  I mean 40 years is nothing to shake a stick at, so I kind of figured I had seen it all.

Let's face it, I've met academia-minded men, soldiers, businessmen, scuba divers, civil servants, politicians, professors, teachers, animal trainers, even the drug addicted...I figure I've pretty much seen it all from control freaks on down, even to men who sport a few too many female hormones for their own good with how they play for the castrati, drama-fests and all.

I have come to find out that, like so many other people, I just don't get it.  I don't understand men and I have come to the point where I have to honestly say that I don't know diddle about the opposite sex.

Now I'll admit it, and I give every single person I come into contact with the "surgeon general's warning" about hanging out with me...I'm not easy, I don't even begin to be palatable sometimes and other times, I'm just an outright PMS nightmare from hell.  But on good days, I'm as sweet as they come.  As Sting so aptly put it, "She can be all four seasons in one day."  I get it, that song could very well be all about me.  I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses and trust me when I say, I am absolutely no picnic, not by a long shot.  I'll admit one other thing too, it takes two to tango, I'm responsible for at least half of the emotional wreckage that is strewn behind me.

I'll cop to the fact that recently I thoroughly tore up one person for text messaging me far too much and far too often.  Lordy, we ALL know about me and text messaging and if you didn't groan and facepalm over the fact that the person text messaging me should have known better (don't you wish you could have grabbed their phone away from them and said, "You don't want to do that, you'll be taking your life into your own hands..."?), here's the brass tacks of it:

30 pages of text messages between my ex and the BHFB three years ago took the whole idea of text messaging and flushed it down the toilet for me.  I don't care for it, I don't like it and I most certainly avoid it at all costs.  Well, after a few months that consistently contained at least 20 back-to-back text messages where it would have taken 5 minutes to tell me the same thing in voice, a close friend got their backside handed to them by my very, VERY sharp tongue.  (That poor soul, I honestly feel sorry for them for getting the south end of me because I promise you it is no where you want to be.)  Point blank I reminded them how much I hate text messaging and if I got another one from them, it was going to take a surgical team an hour to remove their phone from where I was going to shove it.  That's how sharp I can be because I don't want to sit there with my phone dinging like mad, and I'm kind of old fashioned, I actually want to hear the person's voice telling me about what's happening, not read it on the screen of my phone.  But, that's as harsh as I get.  I don't call people names but I do sometimes ask people what the heck they were thinking.  Y'all know me, I don't put up with a bunch of bull.  I like my information quick, simple and to the point; bluntly, it's faster to tell someone something in voice than it does typing away on a smart phone unless it's a "be there in 5 minutes" kind of thing.  Since when do entire life stories have to be told via text messaging?  It's that kind of stuff that sends me screaming right over the edge, arms flailing.

When I get really mad, I actually tell people up front, "I'm upset and I'm going to have to yell at you, but here's why..." and I'll explain why I'm upset.  Then my temper will either cool way off and I'll end up laughing about it or well, the worst happens and I go to the "not so nice" end of the spectrum and the person on the other end gets it with both barrels.  I try to avoid the "both barrels" thing.  Kind, gentle and tasteful is the way I like to speak but sometimes my temper can get away from me before I realize it.  But, we all have that happen to us, don't we?

My problem is that I don't process information the way other people do.  Usually I assume (first mistake there) that I'm the dumbest person in the room.  Yeah, I know, don't roll your eyes, but it's true, I honestly think I'm the dummy in the room so I listen carefully to what's going on around me.  Here's the kicker though, I've realized recently that I'm not the dumbest person in the room (I got invited to Phi Kappa Phi for my 3.72 GPA as a second semester junior, which by the way shocked the hell out of me...) and my brain processes information so fast that things are a "given" to me, which makes me look around and go, "Well, duh!  Isn't that just common sense?"  My mother had to explain it to me tonight at dinner that it's not common sense, it's the fact that I look at things, process them so fast and piece it together in my unique way that most things become a given, not something to figure out because I've already figured it out and it makes perfect sense.  Yeah well, I never realized that people don't necessarily go as fast or think like I do, which is at a high volume and at a pretty quick clip.  It never occurred to me for an instant that it takes other people longer to process information.  I'm the dumbest person in the room, remember?  Well, learned that one over the last couple of weeks, that's for sure.  Note:  If it ever sounds like I'm talking down to you, I'm not, it's just my broken coping mechanisms not realizing that you're not processing things the same way I do.  At the speed I go and how I can spatially piece together things that to others doesn't make sense, it makes life a little harder for me because I get confused due to having to slow down a bit or having to force myself to change speeds or points of view.  So please, don't take it personally if you get a look from me that says, "Well, duh!"

The one thing I'm having the most problem with lately is that I don't like hurting other people's feelings and how I do it unintentionally.  It's the "Well, duh!" thing.  On top of that, I'm a victim of my own kindness when I'm not completely up-front and bluntly honest like my friend and their text messaging.  I end up getting caught with my pants down because I didn't say the hurtful thing that really needs to be said.  How on Earth can you be kind, gentle and tasteful, guarding the other person's feelings, when you have to tell someone that life circumstances have changed and you have to change your direction with it?  This is the second time I've had to deal with the same problem in the last 12 months and it's starting to get annoying.  Sometimes I'm fast and I don't realize it, other times I'm so incredibly slow that it makes me nuts because I can't solve the problem in under two seconds flat.  ARGH!

Oy, sometimes I think I'm just too dang broken for words, but like the old expression goes, "The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its' existence."  Once you know what's going on, you can fix it.  And it only took 40 years to get here!!!  *facepalm*

Liz Gilbert is right when she talks about "The Physics of the Quest":

The Physics of the Quest -- a force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of the Quest Physics goes something like this...

If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter old resentments...and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally... 

And if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue.
And if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher.
And if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some difficult realities about yourself.
Then the truth will not be withheld from you.

Well, we're at the "face and forgive some difficult realities about yourself."  I try to be sweet, fun and filled with nutritional value, but the one part I never expected is that I'm so very difficult to decipher or get along with.  At this point, I have to take my hat off to all of those men who have put up with me over the years...including my sweet father who seems to understand me even when I don't and my mom who has to explain how, when and where my brain likes to process things.  I'm grateful they get it, it gives me some modicum of hope.  Maybe I need to get a translator...oh wait, that's a COPING SKILL...oh well, so much for that...

Tonight I got a phone call from a friend, giving me a proper dressing down and several mean names thrown at me because I'm choosing to spend my time away from the computer, not chained to it and not calling them to give an explanation as to why I can't spend so much time on it anymore.  They made me feel about an inch high, which I guess they needed to do, but at the same time, I guess it was a lesson (one of Liz's "teachers along the way") that I need to be more aware of the world around me.  To that, I should give myself a "Well, duh."  Just like I ask for people to respect my point of view, I guess I have to respect theirs, but not to the point that I'm hard on myself for something I can't do anything about because my world is so mixed up right now and I have things that I have to do that are in reality, not virtual reality. It's like my pal Raj said, "You have to focus on relationships that are based in reality, not in the game space.  Unless a person can reach out and touch you, it's not a relationship."

The hardest thing I'm having to do lately is learn how to forgive myself.  I never realized that forgiving yourself was one of the world's hardest things to do.  But did you know that it relieves anxiety?  I thought that was pretty cool given all of the anxiety I face every single day.

We need a song of the day, don't you think?  Out of thin air, I'm going to go with Airplanes by B.o.B featuring Hayley Williams.

  

The process of feeling normal again...

I was just going over the last three years of posts and I realized that I've been writing a lot of fluff pieces lately, nothing really to do with the guts of post-marital recovery.

I'm still pushing forward.  Like the Sophomore theme song says, "We keep marching on..."

Today, I had the honor of meeting the newest character to The Sophomore, a wordsmith who just happens to be a professional writer and editor. And since he is armed like Hephaestus himself with his literary hammer and anvil striking blows on his red-hot keyboard, he gets the pseudonym "Smith."  Welcome aboard!

Smith has done me the honor of going over the last three years of posts, from beginning to end, bad punctuation and all...and he says that my writing shows fortitude.  I've heard the comment "long-winded" before but never had I experienced a professional writer (with distinguished professional credits to his name out the wazoo) tell me I had a gift for writing and The Sophomore has the potential to be a book because I "write with fortitude."  Don't worry friends, I'm not letting it go to my head, we all know that this blog is a severe catch-all, so I'm just going to roll with the flow.  But, I am hoping if I beg hard enough, I'll have an editor, which is pretty exciting stuff.

But Smith and I had a nice visit today and we talked about the last three years of me writing about recovering from the institution of marriage.  He looked at me and said, "When I read it [the blog] I thought to myself, been there, yep, been there, and been over there too."  Like me, Smith has watched as his marriage disintegrated too.

We talked for a while about what we all go through when you are faced with watching what you thought would be a lifetime commitment crumble down around your ankles.  It's not fun.  It's not anything you ever thought it would be, but Smith told me how I've handled what's happened to me, with the sense of humor I've tackled it with, is pretty unique.  I thought to myself, "What other way is there to do it?"  We also talked about how men can relate with everything I've written about over the last three years as well...hey look y'all, I might have universal appeal!  (To which I thought, "No way!!!!  Cool!")

We talked at length about how when marriage ends, what happens to you directly afterwards depends entirely on where you take it mentally.  If you take your situation to a dark place, being depressed and wallowing in it, what do you think will happen?  You'll be isolated in a very dark place that will ensure that the hill you have to climb, to get over what's happened to you, will be that much higher.  Ok, I'll admit it, sometimes it doesn't look like a hill, it looks like a mountain the size of Everest.  But, you wake up every morning, you remember to breathe in and out and you take care of business no matter how stressed out you are or how much you hurt because you finally figure out what Marcus Aurelius meant when he said, "It's up to you!"

As much as I hate to say it, when your marriage comes crumbling down and you're sitting in the earthquake damaged house, the only person that can rebuild it is you.  You are the one who has to believe that tomorrow will be better than today, the day after that will be better than the day before and so on.  To be blunt, you have to believe in YOU.  No one is going to come along and rebuild your life for you.  Do not let anyone come and sell you a bill of goods that says that recovery will be an easy process because it's not!

Last year, my sister said that when you hit year four after your marriage goes south, you start to feel normal again.  I hate to say it, but she's right.  Lordy, I did not want my recovery to take four years, but coming up on the year three mark, I have to agree with her.

In year one, what did we find me doing?  A lot of lamenting.  Then there was more lamenting and whole lot of swearing.  Those were the days when f-bombs flew from my fingers like a squadron of B-17 bombers on a  carpet bombing mission during World War II, it didn't matter if you were a soldier or a civilian in the war of my marriage, you got hit with an f-bomb.  But you know what?  That's just fine.  If you're in year one, as Michael J. Fox said as Marty McFly in Back to the Future "God damn it George, swear!"  Let it out.  Don't hold it in.  If you hold it in, you're just going to blow up later anyway, and last time I checked, each of us have an unlimited amount of swear words we can use in our lifetimes, so if you're going to develop a temporary case of Tourette's, damn it, let it be in year one.

In year two, you get to discover who you are again.  That's right...it's no more Mr. and Mrs., it's just you.  Remember when you got married?  It was the "three entities living under the same roof" paradigm.  And no, I'm not talking about anything supernatural either.  The three entities of marriage are the "you", the "me", and the "us."  Not a lot of couples really realize that there are three entities that live under the same roof while you're married, but the kicker is that yes, while you're bound by whatever covenant your belief system says, it's also the fact that two unique individuals have decided to become known as a singular entity, "The Us."  So, it's three unique individuals in the living space because any married person will tell you, "I love my spouse, but I'm still me."   It's the old, "I might be married, but I'm not dead" paradigm when you see an attractive person pass by.

But now that the marriage is over and your ex-spouse and "The Us" have gone on their merry way, you feel it full force.  Your life has been turned upside down, and you've incurred more damage than an empty side of the closet and the vacancy on the other side of the bed: you've lost the "Us", and your companion.  Now here is where I would usually put my cynical "and your companion that you stupidly trusted all those years."  But you're not the stupid one unless you were the one who single-handedly destroyed your marriage.  Here's where I remind you, "Hey, it's not all your fault, it takes two to tango, accept what's happened, find the pieces of you that need work, work on them and above all, find the bright side.  Listen to me and KP when we say, 'Put down the shoulder yoke and heavy buckets, accept your part in what happened then build a bridge and get over it.'"

Year two is when you look around, realize that you're finally sleeping in the middle of the bed, the closet is just filled with your clothes and you're doing just fine, thank you very much.  It's the point where the bathroom vanity doesn't look like it's missing anything because your stuff is just where you like it and no one is coming in and moving stuff around.  Year two is when you get to look in the mirror and say, "I'm still sexy" if you haven't had that confidence boost hit you in year one...by year two, you should be feeling it.  However, here is where I'm going to tell you that you're still going to have apprehension about getting back out there, the flesh will be willing to get some attention, but the spirit is still a little tattered and torn.  Year two is also known as "getting back up onto the horse and finding your own innate nutritional value."

So, here we are, closing in on year three.  It's like Smith told me today, "It's all about fortitude" and he's right. Yeah, (excuse the expression) your marriage or long-term relationship went to shit.  It happens!  Hate to break it to you, but even if it's just now happening to you, you're not alone.  Don't be bitter, take solace in the fact that lots of us have been through it and if you reach out to your friends, decide to author a blog or just go out and get hammered, you've started your recovery process and you're going to make it!  (Just don't let getting hammered all the time become the norm.)  What happens next is up to you and where you decide to take it.  I have a strong suspicion that year three is all about guts.  Yeah, you've had to use up a lot of that intestinal fortitude to get this far, but what are you waiting for?  As Patrick Dennis said in the book (later made into the great film starring Rosalind Russell) Auntie Mame, "Live, live, LIVE!  Live is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death."  So, the question goes to you (and to me for all that goes):

What are you waiting for?  Step up to the table and eat your fill!

For those of you who have just begun your recovery, pick yourself up by your bootstraps and believe in yourself, you can do it!  Even though the world feels like it has come to an end, it hasn't, you've just embarked on the beginning of a whole new chapter and adventure in your life.  You are free to write your own story...what will it contain?  From me to you, I hope it's filled with nothing but incredible, uplifting nutritional value.

For those of you who have been in on the journey from the beginning, or in the middle of years one or two and know where I'm coming from, clap and sing along at the top of your lungs...

We're marching on!

Billy, the Oscars, Twitter and...

Ok, the show is over and everyone has been thanked, even the dog.

I'd like to thank Lucky and the Academy....

Classiest moment:  Christopher Plummer getting an Oscar at age 82, looking at it and saying, "You're only 2 years older than me.  Where have you been all my life."  Very sweet and if you doubted for a moment that he's Canadian, just his small nod to his Corps d'Esprit au Francais and you knew he was bilingual in a heartbeat.

This year's Oscars were my first time out as a member of the Twitterati...and I have to say, I might have tweeted too much, but I seriously doubt it, since I have only 5 followers.  LOL.

My tweets for the night can be found at: https://twitter.com/#!/etrnl_sophomore.  But, if you're not into digging through all that, here's my faves of the night...

6:43 pm - Tony Stark & Pepper Potts present an #Oscars. No, not a promo for#IronMan3. Lol
6:58 pm - I hope someone has their finger on the bleep button for Melissa Leo.#Oscars
7:54 pm - Note: the dog has been thanked. #Oscars

Directly after tweeting about the dog, I thought to myself, I guess everyone and their dog has been thanked...but isn't it a little early to tweet that?  The show wasn't even over yet!

Oy veh, the news is playing behind me, Sasha Baron Cohen did something idiotic, enough to be mentioned on the news...which makes me want to look at my Ethics Professor and ask, "Was that really newsworthy?"

Back to the show though...

Meryl.

Meryl.

Meryl.

We remember me going through "It's Complicated."  From writhing in my seat in the theater because it was too soon after my ex left, to three years later when I can now heartily laugh and get all the way through it without an issue.  On the stage at the Oscars tonight, Meryl got out her glasses to present an award and to my complete surprise and joy, they were the exact same glasses that she wore in "It's Complicated."

7:57 pm - Omg! Meryl is wearing her glasses...the same glasses she wore in "It's Complicated" #Oscars

Not but a few minutes later:  8:29 pm - Go #Meryl!!!! Yaaaaaaay! #Oscars  when she won for best actress.  


Let's be clear, the fact she's been nominated 17 times is a sign - she's that great.  I'm glad she won!  However, the Twitterati weren't as convinced as I was.  I saw Tweets that said Viola Davis (loved her in Eat Pray Love) should have won for her role in The Help.  Others were upset about Michelle Williams not getting the nod for My Week with Marilyn.  I didn't see anyone get upset over Rooney Mara's loss, nor did we see anyone get upset over anyone else...


Hold it, we have to stop for a moment on Rooney Mara.  Now, that is a very young girl.  She's 26.  Since she is 26, I want to slap the head off of the moron who picked her dress.  As I was watching the red carpet coverage before the show, I was on a voice chat with RJ.  I stopped everything I was doing when I saw her dress, keyed the mic and RJ heard:

"Oh.  My.  God.  No.  They couldn't be so cruel to that young woman.  You should see her dress.  You know, my bust is something that I can't get around or hide so I like for it to sit up high, a shelf if you will.  The dress they put on that poor girl looks like her boobs are sagging down to her whatevers.  Really?"

Sufficed to say, Rooney Mara's dress was a disaster, probably the worst dress coupled with the worst hairdo... Asian bangs with a bun?  Um, sorry Rooney, but no, don't ever do that again.  Between the saggy boobs on such a young body and a hairdo that was just repulsive, I hope she comes back next year with something a bit more stunning.

Three way tie for favorite red carpet look:

Jessica Chastain (The Help)

Penelope Cruz

Sandra Bullock

Now that's some serious elegance.  Far and away Penelope Cruz stood out and I'm thrilled to see Pedro Amaldovar's "It" girl glisten in the early spring sun.

Tonight on the Oscars, I heard a lot of French.  Oui!  J'ai fait! (I did.)  From Monsieur Plummer to Monsieur Dujardin...which probably have both gone "eh tabarnac!  J'ai gagné!" which translates roughly to mean "holy crap I won!"  Yeah!  Lots of French, but since we've ventured into the rest of the world outside of Hollywood, you know I gotta do it, the list of "why in heavens did you do that?"

The foreign language film that won this year is from Iran.  When the director of the film went on stage to accept, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  In the back of my mind, the PR practitioner in me said, "Oh God, don't do it, please, please, let me be wrong..." I wasn't.  You guessed it, out of the film maker's mouth came a political mini-treatise.   I did, I facepalmed right then and there.  I figure that when you're honored for your work, let it be about the work, not about the political BS that goes on around it.  All he needed to say was "Thank you Academy.  Thanks to my kids, wife, etc, etc, even the dog..." but to include international politics?   Politics in acceptance speeches went out with Susan Sarandon's and Tim Robbins marriage and Michael Moore mouthing off about Bush II.   

I really wanted to go around this, but since I did it last year, I have to do it again. instead of the James Franco fiasco I wrote about last year, we have Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, probably the worst two offenders to my delicate sensibilities since Chris Farley.  Just having to write about them make me want to soak my entire person in bleach to get the filth off.  A million scrub brushes could not get the stank of their performance out of Oscar history and for that I'm just mortified.  I tweeted:  "Sweet lordy, I've found a bathroom break, it's called Will Ferrell and Zach G."  I couldn't watch.  When I saw Will Ferrell step over the orchestra barrier in that blinding white tuxedo, I said, "Oh HELL no" and took myself to the bathroom.  But let's add insult to injury because those two can't help but insult intelligence and good taste... Zach Galifianakis decided that he was going to close cut his beard (which he already looks like human filth) and leave his mustache long.  Ok kids, let's break it down and I'm not going to be nice because I don't have to...the man looks like white trash and he had the audacity to show up at the Oscars, THE OSCARS mind you, looking just like he stepped out of The Hangover.  Really?  I ask you...what person in their right mind does something like that?  Oh, nevermind, to quote the great Shirley MacLaine in the film Steel Magnolias: I doubt he takes the dishes out of the sink before he pees in it.  The Academy Awards = Venerated Institution (politically swayed or not).  The Academy has been in existence since the 1920's, that's 84 years of Oscar and that piece of trash shows up looking like that!  How dare he!

But speaking of obnoxious mustaches...Bradley Cooper, 2011's Sexiest Man Alive on the cover of People Magazine sporting what the Twitterati called "His Porn-stash".  I told RJ when I saw it, "Holy lordy his mouth is so wide when he smiles, it looks like a black bar across his mouth.  Why in hell he feels the need to channel Tom Selleck is beyond me."  No Bradley, you are NOT Tom Selleck.  Get out the Barbasol and get shavin' and take your pal, that excuse for a human being called Zach Galifianakis with you.  Lather face, use a SHARP razor, shave closely, then rinse.  Like Bill Cosby in Himself reminding his children, please don't forget to dry your face afterward.

Then there was Angelina's pose with the dress that showed a lot...I mean a lot of leg.  But, as fate would have it, the gentlemen who won the award she presented (I can't remember what it was) wait, let me look it up...it was for the writers...hahahahahaha!  I'm sorry, just the thought of her giving the writers something to write about strikes me as something very ironic...oy veh.  But, you can't keep a good writer down, the Original Screenplay trio that won the award she presented mocked her vampish posing with the dress.  Way to go guys!

I forgot one thing...The Artist.  It won best picture, but as I watched the producer high-five Harvey Weinstein, well, I knew what happened, like Chicago before it, it made me realize that money does buy Oscars, whether it be promotional team behind it to the people "coercing" others to vote for the film with the most money behind it.  The thing about The Artist -  it's a film I don't even want to see, but they do that every year, don't they?

But then, there was Billy.  Thank the Gods and creative forces in the universe because Billy Crystal brought the Oscars back up to par.  His opening with Justin Bieber just to make sure the 18-24's got their fix was just hysterical.  George Clooney kissing him was funny, but then it's Billy, what more can you ask for?  Thank you Billy, thank you, thank you, thank you. The cracks about the Kodak company filing for bankruptcy so therefore the theater was nameless "Chapter 13 Theater", "Nameless Theater" were absolutely priceless.  You are what an Oscar host always should be. 

In all, 33 tweets, two eyerolls and a lot of fun watching and Tweeting about the biggest night in Hollywood.

Have fun surfing all of the coverage of the 84th Annual Academy Awards from the Chapter 11 Theater.

As for me, I've got to read for my Media Law class.  Have a good night everyone!

Song of the day...you know I have to do it... Billy's opening monologue...nine is the new five.

Taking time for me...

Have you ever noticed how sometimes life likes to go so fast that you forget the most important person in your life?  That's right, I'm talking about you.  Yourself.  The body, mind and spirit you wake up in every morning.

The last 24 hours have been an exercise in figuring out how badly PMS likes to tear me up.  Oh, I'm not easy when it happens.  My fuse becomes short, I become extremely irritable and if my cell phone goes off with even something as mundane as a text message, there is a large probability that my mind will envision it flying across the room.  Not good.

Doc Cat taught me last spring that when something like that happens, you have to sit back and breathe.  Take a nice long deep breath, hold it in for a few seconds then let it out, imagining all of your stress exiting your body through the air exiting your lungs.  I did that, then I realized that even with all of the school, work, and every little other thing that seems to eat my time like a hungry animal, I needed to take time for me.

Even further than that, I realized something else: How often do we really take time for ourselves?  To pamper ourselves a little bit, whether it's a mani/pedi or a massage or even down to just turning everything off and enjoying the silence and breathing in a little bit of peace.

How often do we really do that?

For me, it's not often enough.  For some unknown reason, I always thought taking time for myself meant that I could have a couple of hours of play time with a video game, but I soon realized that's not really taking time for myself, that's enslaving myself to the computer.

I realized that I need to truly undertake an effort to find out what it means to take time for myself.

So I'll lob the question to the gallery, what does taking time for yourself mean to you?

Billy is BACK!

That's right my ladyfish and jellyspoons!  With a great sigh of relief I saw tonight that the one and only Billy Crystal will be hosting this year's 84th Annual Academy Awards.  WOOOHOOOO!

If you remember my posts from last year, you know that I screamed from my balcony, "Where's Billy?"  Well, this year he's back.  Thank the gods.  No more James Franco.

I've joined the Twitterati for this year's fun and games, so I'll be tweeting sophomore-style live from my couch during the telecast.  Want to follow along?  Just find @etrnl_sophomore on Twitter.  That's me!  Hey, you should follow along just to watch me do my style of humor in only 140 characters!  Take that you "oh she's long-winded" critics!

By the way, great article this month on Twitter in Vogue, it sold me on joining up.

So, raise your glass and cheer, Billy is back!

By the way, two new things:  I've updated the Soundtrack page, so if you had a tune you heard here but can't remember the name, the list is up to date.  Second, I've got a brand new Twitter widget that will let you follow my tweets if you so choose.

Today's song of the day goes out to the host with the most's and his ninth appearance with the big golden guy...The Boys Are Back by Thin Lizzy.

Watching the Dog Show...

Since it was Valentine's Day, I wanted to snuggle up with something I really love.  On television last night was the Westminster Kennel Club Show and you all know how crazy I am about a very special dog...Ace's Dalmatian, Lucky.

Now we've all gone over how much I love that dog and I always miss him.  As I watched the show, happily trotting across my screen came a Dalmatian named "Spotlight's Ruffian" or "Ian" for short.  I sat there thinking of Lucky and just cried.

We all know how Lucky's life has gone.  He's a darling dog with so much spirit, to know he came from such a horrid past (for those of you who don't know, he was rescued from a dog fighting ring, severely emaciated with a savagely broken leg) to being a loving pal, well, watching Ian trot across the screen, I thought of Lucky and how much that dog means to me.

I sat with pride watching Ian participate in the Best-In-Show since he had won the Non-Sporting Group the night before.  To be honest, I was looking forward to watching a member of Lucky's breed beat the snot out of those other pretentious, snobby dogs. Because I know how wonderful a dog a Dalmatian can be, I sat still with my fingers crossed thinking that this could be the year that the Dalmatian wins it's first ever Best-In-Show.  I thought to myself, "Come on Ian, don't let Lucky down..."

Now remember, I'm not a big dog fancier.  I've been around the large Doberman's that call my sister's house home, even the little half-pint Fox Terrier mix Zoe.  I've been around all of my sister's dogs from Stosha the Alaskan Malamute to Bo, a Heinz 57 mutt that had more personality than a carload of starlets.  Then there's Smash, my nephew's Boxer and a few other dogs like a friend of mine's Neapolitan Mastiff named Uzi (which by the way, I don't care what anyone says, the Neo isn't a dog, that's a horse).  But not a single one of those dogs has stolen my heart like Lucky.

So after watching Ian the Dalmatian take the best in the Non-Sporting group, I was rooting for him hard-core.   When I heard that no Dalmatian had ever taken Best-In-Show, I kept my fingers crossed hoping that Ian would break the glass ceiling for all spotted dogs everywhere.  But, Ian had some stiff competition going on.  There was Fifi or "The Fifinator", a beautiful female Doberman that I know Nan and Carl's Dobbie Wrecks would have fallen head over heels for.  Then there was a gorgeous German Shepherd who had a fabulous gait and even a wire-haired Dachshund was sandwiched in between the Irish Setter and a Kerry Blue Terrier.  Then came the bane of my existence, like some large cat coughed up a hairball, out waddled a Pekingese.  (At that point I was grateful that the Toy Group didn't barf up a rat-like (bane of my existence) Chihuahua.)  No offense to the Chihuahua lovers out there, but I can't stand them, so don't ask me to change my mind now.

When I saw the Pekingese waddle out, my heart flew up into my throat.  "Oy veh," I thought, "There goes another year without the Dalmatian sitting on top of the heap...they always pick the Pekingese."  I honestly don't get it.  Now I will give a large caveat, I hate, despise and otherwise have nothing but disdain for small dogs.  Zoe is the one exception because she's family, otherwise the rest of those over-fluffed fleabags can go hide in some rich chick's purse because I have zero use for them.

I like dogs with some size, a true companion that will give a hearty bark that sounds like it comes up from the pads on their feet, a thunderous warning to all non-friendlies that come into the vicinity.  THAT is what I call a dog.  Ok, Bo never barked, but he could if he really needed to and it wasn't some wimpy sound either.   Even though he was relatively small, he still let you know he was there.  But the point is, I'm a big fan of dogs with foxy faces (no jowls or faces that look like they've been squarely hit with a frying pan).  I like a beautiful face on a dog, like a Shiba Inu (who, by the way, looks very similar but not as fluffy as Bo):

How can you tell that face "No"?

Then of course is Lucky and the wonderful Dalmatian face:

This isn't Lucky, but I just wanted to give you a great Dalmatian pic.

See?  No jowls!  Just a great looking what I consider a "face" dog.  I liked the German Shepherd, he was a handsome animal and the Irish Setter wasn't bad, I mean the dog is a little too skinny for my taste, not enough meat on the bones and a little to stick figurish from the front.  Besides, think about it, the Westminster Kennel Club show is like the Super Bowl for dogs, but when they're not being shown, they're regular dogs, so upon checking out the Irish Setter with its' long coat, I thought to myself, "That's a high maintenance dog...no thank you!"  On top of all that, I like a dog that just looks good 24/7 without having to brush it constantly.  I'm a wash and wear kind of dog person.  I like it when you can get out the hose on a summer day and have a good time washing your pup of choice without having to go through hours of drying, combing and frou-frouing.  I'm a hose 'em down, scrub 'em up and let 'em shake the water off kind of gal.  If they don't look good after that, it's not a dog I want around.  Besides, all that fur holds in foul odors and I like a good smelling dog, not a stank factory.

So, back to the show.  I held my breath as a couple of dogs went around the ring before Ian.  They did look really nice and I worried for the only spotted contestant in the group.  But then it came time for Ian to be judged.  I held my breath as the judge looked him over and I giggled as Ian's tail was just a-wagging!  I sat back at that moment pondering whether or not the judge was going to take points off for the wagging because none of the other dogs did it.  But, if you know anything about a Dalmatian, they're very animated and love to wag their tails because they really love pleasing the humans around them, so if that judge really knew Dalmatians, she'd know that was very normal for a happy dog of his breed.  After the judge looked him over, he was taken around the ring and the other dogs stepped up and had their turn.

At the end of the day, I was right...that *bleepity* *bleep* *bleep* *bleeping* Pekingese won the day.  As I looked at the judge next to the dog, I thought about something peculiar...Have you ever heard how some people look like their dogs?  Well, the lady judge that did Best-In-Show had hair that looked like guess who?  The Pekingese.  Go figure, she probably has one at home.

After the Peke was announced the winner, my heart broke into pieces.  Lucky and his breed had been snubbed once again for a little rat dog.  I thought to myself, "After all Lucky has been through, they dis his breed!  How could they!"  But then I realized they weren't judging Lucky, they were judging Ian and the rest of the Dalmatian breed.  I couldn't help but think that the judge had no love for the spots.  But I do!  Tons!

I might just have to call up Ace just to make an appointment to see Lucky.  Hey, he might be blind in one eye, have hip dysplasia and a limp, but he's still my sweet canine boy!

A Pekingese may have won Best-In-Show this year at Westminster, but Lucky the Dalmatian is still Best-In-The-World to me.  Hats off to Ian for a great show and the rest of the Dalmatians that competed this year.  Don't worry my spotted friends, we'll get 'em next year.

To all of my fellow canine enthusiasts, hug your pal today, they deserve it.  There is no better friend to a human being than a dog.

So for Valentine's Day I'm sending love to Lucky, Wrecks, Zoe, Bo (who is in Puppy Heaven), Daphne and to all of your dogs too.  A heart shaped box of dog treats is the order of the day.

To see the judging for this year's show, go to http://www.westminsterkennelclub.org