Happy is as Happy does.

Everyone seems to be in search of Happiness.

But for me.  It comes down to this.

There is nothing quite so happy as a sock monkey on a swing.

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”   – Dalai Lama

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama

First there was the Dragon Slayer.
Then, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Now it seems… my family has collectively become…  The Bunny Slayer.

Frances and Ollie have been hard at it.  You may be familiar with the phrases…. Hoof-and-Mouth, Foot in Mouth, Tongue and Cheek….but around here… it is Bunny in Mouth.

Even, Max… back in the day… would nab a little Cotton Tail.

The saga continues.

Today, while I was driving down Eaton-Lewisburg Road… a speedy rabbit dashed out.  The ding-dong ran out when I was nearly past.    Rear wheel AND…… Thwackity Thwack.
In fact, I never saw the thing… until after the fact.  Yes, the horrid course of events played out in my rear view mirror.

Bunny Slayer.  I do not wear this Badge of Distinction with Pride or Honor.  NO.    I loathe this title.

I am guessing the other human in the house may have Mario Andretti-ed a few bunnies in her day too.

And.  Tonight…. as I was working outside… Ollie bounded up to me…. to proudly display her latest catch.
“Oh Ollie.  Not another.  Please drop it… so I can at least give this little baby bunny a proper  burial.”

Honest to goodness… Ollie went over and buried the thing in the mulch.

So there you have it.  Bunny Slayers.  With a Conscious.
Not to mention… we are all ears.

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.” – H.L. Mencken

When we were kids, things were very different.  For sure.
The times I am most thinking about tonight, is young childhood…. when you would go out with a friend or two, and you would come up with a game to play.

Just suiting up for some skinned knees, and all.  But the game creation ….. was very creative in it’s own right.  It was usually some sort of hybrid construction, consisting of Tag, Hide-N-Seek, Leap Frog, Twenty Questions….. whatever the heck we could throw together.

As if that wasn’t enough.  We would make up our own rules as we went.  Yes.  We would “roughly” assign some sort of general workings prior to the onset of the game.  Yet, as it evolved, so did the rules.

My good friend Plinky Watherton was great for this.  (And no.  I have no idea why he was called Plinky.)

But back to the game afoot.  Plinky was… for lack of a better term…..  a Game-Changer.

“Okay, you can only touch the tree for five seconds, and then after that, you have to spin in circles until you fall down….OR… you can crawl backwards over to the back steps…..  Got IT?”

Got it.

And away we would go.  Yet….. if things were going great in the game… we NEVER changed the rules.  We only switched things up when the “flow of the game” or “the course of events” wasn’t quite going right.  Pretty smart kids.

We could learn from the past it seems.  If we are smart adults, we learn to implement this behavior when we grow up.

You know.  If the way we are banging our heads up against the wall isn’t quite working out how we planned, perhaps we should try something else.  Perhaps.

When the same behavior produces the same results, over and over and over again….. and the results do no have a favorable outcome…  we should change the behavior.

Another one of life’s little gems.  And once again…. it seems ….  easier said than done.

At any rate, thanks for reading tonight.  I’m done touching the tree….. so now I have to go start spinning around in circles until I fall down.  Yeah Baby.

Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from flowers.
It seems that when a flower stands strong in its own beauty, everything around it…. is complimentary to its existence.   And all of it, as a whole, becomes more beautiful.

Yeah.  But let’s face it.  I ain’t no stinkin’ rose.  Not by a long shot.

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” – David Hume

Commodity.

I typically think of “commodity” as a positive word.  Yet, I had a conversation with my brother the other day.  I said that “someone” was a real commodity.  He thought I was speaking of them in a negative manner.

In the business world… I guess… a commodity is a material or product that can be bought or sold.   However.  In other terms….it is also defined as something useful or valuable.

Two takes on the same exact word.  Homonym.

Good thing I didn’t say it was a fluke.
That could be a flatworm, a fish, the end parts of an anchor, the fins on a whale’s tail…. or it could be a stroke of luck.

And that is how most of my my days feel.  Like Homonyms.

Which may, or may not be… a commodity.  I guess it all depends on how you look at things.  At anything.

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” – John Lubbock

When I was in High School, we were allowed to take “electives” to round out our schedule.  What to do… what to do.  Latin?  Physics?  What to choose?
Most girls took Home Economics.  So… like a Lemming, I followed suit.  I wasn’t so great with it…… at all.  Every time I would bake something…. the teacher would say… “Polly, your dough has fallen.”  Boy did that ever get a rise out of me.  As it turns out…. I only did sew-sew in Home Ec.

So I took Wood Shop.   Now I really shined there.  I could make all sorts of neat little things.  Like one of Santa’s Elves, I’ll tell you.  I saw dust everywhere, but that did not deter me.  ….. …. And at the end of the semester, we took our Wood Shop Final Exam.  I nailed it.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  -Thomas A. Edison

I would say I am a bit of a Pescetarian.

Unless, of course… you count all the chicken eggs I eat.  Well… occasionally I have the actual chicken.   Oh wait….  I have ham every morning for breakfast too.    And every now and again, I like a good burger or steak.

Holy crap.  Ixnay the whole escetarianismPay thing.  Pitch it right out the window, really.

But in all fairness, I DO eat more fish than not.

Yet once again,  I am sucked into another huge conundrum in life.  I feel guilty about this fish-eating-practice sometimes.  You see… I have pet fish.  Koi.

I really enjoy our Koi.  They have names.  I hang out with them.  A few of them eat right out of my hand.

I looked in to my whole preoccupation with fish.  I think it started early on.  Yep.  Growing up I had the whole “Fish-Influence” deal.  I loved AquaMan.  He was my favorite Superhero.  And Don Knotts in the Movie…The Incredible Mr. Limpett.   Rocking.

Of course there is the whole Catholic thing too.   Born and raised under the ways of Vatican City. Catholics were required to abstain from meat every Friday, as a form of penance in honor of the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross on Good Friday.   Hence the fish.

In the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 10:9-16), St. Peter has a vision in which God reveals that Christians can eat any food. So, when we abstain, it’s not because the food is impure; we’re voluntarily giving up something good, for our spiritual benefit.  Hence the fish.

Here’s a spoiler for all you Still-Practicing-Catholics.  Many Catholics don’t realize that Church still recommends abstinence on all Fridays of the year, not just during Lent. In fact, if we don’t abstain from meat on non-Lenten Fridays, we’re required to substitute some other form of penance.   Get busy with the Hail Mary’s.

But.  Let’s get back to things.

Tonight, an old friend, who raises Koi, brought over a whole truckload for me to see.  A few of them are pictured above.  I bought most of them…. well…..   ALL of them.  And tonight, I hung out with those fish quite a bit.

I don’t know what to do about my fish eating, though.  I sure won’t eat my pets.   That would be bad form.

But I love fish…. I guess… in more ways than one.
Being with them at the deep pond… and also….  being with them at the deep fryer.  With Tartar Sauce.

Oooohhh My.   What’s a girl to do….  OR… what’s a GILL to do?
Go Fish.

Dear Ms. Bunny,
I have a huge favor to ask.  The next time you get pregnant, which I am sure… will be again very soon (we ALL know how rabbits are)….   I ask you to please, please, PLEASE….. build your little den somewhere away from the house in which I live.

You see, here is the problem.  At least, on THIS morning it was a problem.  At the start of each day…..  I like to work out.  I also meditate,  and stretch….. and use that first hour of the schedule to sort of…. get my Mojo ON for the rest of the day.

So this morning, I opened the sliding glass doors to enjoy the beautiful outdoor air during my routine.  As I was on pushup number eight or so…. I looked over…. and there was my dog Ollie.  But this morning she looked different.  Uhmmmm.  She had a baby bunny in her mouth.    Yep.  I am pretty sure it was one of yours.  I shooed her outside.  But… as luck would have it….. I was just a little late to the party… it seems.

I found three more of your baby bunnies at various locations inside my house.  Yes.  Little, cute, dead surprises everywhere.  Ollie was busy a girl.  I imagine Frances was all a part of this scheme too.

Now, I am sure this is much more upsetting to you than it is to me.  You know… this Ollie the Terminator meets Sarah Conners of the baby bunny world…..   four times over.

So, if you would…. twitch your little whiskers… and pick a better spot for the nursery next time.  I beg of you.  I’ll buy you a bag of carrots if you’ll work with me on this one.  I have a feeling that putting it in the same location will only yield the same outcome.  You see… Ollie has been walking around the house all day… with a pair of sunglasses on… saying “I’ll Be Back.”

Sincerely,
The Terminator’s Mom……  aka Polly the Bunny Lover.

“Common sense is not so common.” – Voltaire

You probably could guess it… from the word transfer.
TRANS….. is from Latin transmittere…. which means “send across, transfer, pass on,”

And there you have it, right across the board.
Transact.  Transcend.  Transcribe.  Transmute.  Transfigure.  Transform.  Transgress.  Transition.  Translate.  Transmit.  Transport ….and on and on and on.

Now it is time for me to find out all I can about Transcendentalism….. which was… and is…   that idealistic philosophical and social movement that developed in New England around 1836.  It developed in reaction to rationalism.

It had many influences… which included romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy.  It is kind of cool in the fact that it explored the notion that divinity pervades all nature and humanity.
Way back when…. in those early days….  its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living.  Dudes like  Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures.  Now that is transonic… if I’ve ever heard anything.

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Be not simply good – be good for something.”  – Henry David Thoreau

Conversations.
On any given day, you may find yourself in any number of conversations.  They vary from far and wide.  Heaven only knows really.

They could be about any little thing, or grow in any direction.  It is all a big surprise…. what any one of them could bring.
Today for instance.  I had numerous chats with people.  Their ages ranged from  from 2 years to 90 years.

A dear friend of mine said…  “If I could come back as anything in the next life, I’d come back as a buzzard.  That way people would surely leave you alone.”  Now that is an true introvert… I would have to say.

A little later, my lovely life partner asked… “How could I improve on the potato salad, the next time I make it?”  To which I responded…. “You can’t.  THIS right here… THIS is THE perfect potato salad.”  And she said…”Next time, I think I’ll add more mustard.”   Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhh.

Then… in another conversation (while playing a video game), I told a six year old… “You are going to have to fight him tooth and nail.  Get in there and get the guy.” To which he responded… “What is tooth and nails, Polly?”   Ohhhhh.

I brought my Mom to our house for the Memorial Day Cookout.  When I took her back to her “home” …. she asked….. “Now who’s house were we just at?”  Double Oh.

You see.  The conversation can lead you any where.  Down any path.   The interactions can make you laugh, cry, ponder, wonder, or sigh.  Sometimes they make you happy, and sometimes they might upset you.  It is all part of the give and take, the interaction, the connection…. the holy-moly dealings we have with others.  Our communications… which keep us connected in life.  To everyone.  Everywhere.

Unless of course…… you are a buzzard.    And in that case….  well…. you’ll be a buzzard.

“It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.” – Yogi Berra