Did You Do Anything Fun?

I got a reprieve from tennis.

Wotta Weekend! Have a Happy One!

(Neither of those guys are Bentley either)

So I guess I have some explaining to do.  (Do you sit on your deck blogging and does your tree drop all kinds of crap into your keyboard making you wonder what the insides of your laptop now look like and at which point that laptop will grind to a crunching dead-leaves-and-red-spider-mites HALT altogether???  I DO!)

So what is your idea of a romantic weekend?  Possibly it has taken me a long time to figure this out,  But this last Valentine's Day weekend was really the most perfect for me.  It involved a day at the beach, a day at the flea market, (as I have shared with you) and a day at Ikea!  I could have easily substituted a day at the hardware store for the day at Ikea, but Home Depot makes my husband weep in frustration and anyway, if I'd gone there instead, I couldn't share with you this hysterical link.  (This site, entitled "Go Away" appears at the far bottom right of my blogroll and I'm sure you all miss it all the time.  I think it's just the thing in certain moments, sort of Python meets Seinfeld at Judge Judy's.  I'll let you decide for yourselves).

So as I've said.  When you're young and you don't know any better, you fall for all that Hallmark stuff at Valentine's Day, but when life's great existential pickup truck has run you over a couple of times and left some touchy grooves on your person where its tires once were, well, cheap polyester ribbon and floppy big-headed roses just won't cut it! Cause no matter what you do to those flowers - sprays powders snipping the ends off or refrigerating them, their big heads will just flop over - and accordingly with them every probable illusion about your fine romance.  And what will you be left with?

I'll leave you to contemplate that for a moment.

So I'm telling you.  Yours may not be the same triple threat as mine, but you get the drift.  Someday you, like me, may find a greater comfort in the idea that: 

1)  Oceans are Forever.  Especially now that they're enjoying that additional boost of melted polar ice cap. 

2)  The Remembrance of Things Past is never Sweeter (old junk) than when you can pinch yourself and be reminded that you, my Dear, are still a Thing of the Present.  (And so is your Love.)

3)  NOTHING can be more romantic than schlepping a heavy awkward cardboard box up the stairs together (him pushing too hard and you falling over on a turn) and then toddling off on your own to make a nice dinner while that Hunka-Hunka Burning Love is sweating and swearing over allen wrenches and flimsy paper diagrams to make something cheap and cheerful for you to set your tidy little botty on!   Or stuff your bits and bobs in.  (See how Ikea brings on the double entendres?)

You will never be too rich, too thin, or too old to find fascination in other people's relics and satisfaction in something HOME-MADE.  (Even if it came into your home in a flat-pack. )

And as for beaches.  (In February!)  The story I'm about to tell could not remotely have been as charming if it had taken place in a strip mall.  I PROMISE.

So here's where the aforementioned explaining comes in:  In my lifetime I never have before, nor ever will again I think have a more enrapturing encounter than last Saturday when a loping, wobbly, slightly dopey but impossibly loving little four-month or so St. Bernard puppy named BENTLEY kept splitting off from his Master to follow ME down the beach.  The first time I crouched down to say Hi and let him tuck himself under me and wiggle and bob while I rubbed him down from front to back.  The second time I just waved and tried to speed away while his Master called at him to heel.  The third time I crouched down again and he galloped up to lavish my left cheek with huge wet kisses.  Finally his master had to put down the drink glass he was carrying and produce the old red leash and leash that bad puppy in! (OH!  So Sorry! Little Bentley Love!)   

I didn't take any pictures.  Because some moments are so special, the charm would be broken by whipping the camera out and trying to coax someone into the most camera pleasing pose.  And sometimes when you take a picture, the magical moment disappears in the time it takes for the shutter to retract and since it's crystallized in (what? digits?) OK digits! these days, (no I must mean pixels)  it does not make a proper imprint on your brain and most importantly, on your heart.  

Yes some of the best pictures get away.  In fact most of the best ones do.  Because the universe intends for you to capture them by other means.  

NOW.  IF.  Hubby hadn't been there alongside me that day.  This story might have ended entirely differently.  The charming, smoothly coiffed, silver-haired Master MIGHT have invited me home for, uh, Champagne cocktails or better - Bellini's.  With him and Bentley.  And riding in his Porsche (we ARE talking Malibu here).  And maybe where that Porsche is parked there might have been ALL OF BENTLEY'S FAMILY!!!!!!  Or at least his (Dog) Mom. (All you other Mom's butt out!) And I might now be blogging to you from my gracefully weathered teak chaise-longue overlooking the ocean in my new blonde blow-out and diamond ankle bracelet.  Now wouldn't THAT be ROMANTIC?

Or an episode from the Big Lebowski.

No I am quite content with my weekend as it was.  And I am quite content with my new mantra:  Bentley, Bentley, Bentley.  Because each time I utter it Bentley is very real before me, and with me.  In all his soft affection.

And when it rains this weekend I won't be the one taking Bentley out under a collapsed umbrella, his big wet tail lashing me as we go along.  I won't be the one shooing him off the sofa and chasing him around the house with old towels trying to get his muddy soaked feet clean.

I won't be out in the back-forty slaughtering herds of steers to ensure that Bentley will have adequate sustenance for the whole of his loping canine days.  Or hunkered over my industrial can-opener prising open those mammoth cans of mush that stand-in for honest protein these days.

I'll be here in the dry reminding myself once again that, as lovely as last weekend was for me, this weekend will probably not be the same. And that there probably never WILL be another weekend in my lifetime quite like that. And that I will probably never ever see Bentley, or a dog at all like him, ever ever again.  Which makes it that much more special.

But for you this weekend .................WHO KNOWS?  

Melrose Trading Post: Other Peoples' Stuff

WHERE:  Melrose and Fairfax

WHO:  You Don't Know????!!!!!
(Why do I find him sexy - well cuddly? OK sexy.  I think he reminds me of Hubby.)

WHY?  (Wild!)

It became apparent last week that my household was suffering from a DEFICIT OF JUNK.

I know.  Those terms are usually only used these days in terms of economic conditions and Wall St.  NO I MEAN SURPLUS on Wall St.   Of Junk.

but hey listen when I was sent hunting for a repurposed something to share with the blog universe, shock horror, I fell short.

So TO DO something about this.

Does that satin stool look a little "rude" - or what?  Like Scarlett Johannson in Depends.

And speaking of Scarlett, it's in no way intentional but it may turn out this post becomes about BACKSIDES.

When it's not about psychedelic rugs and channeling your inner Endora.

No this is not Bentley.

Which one immediately caught YOUR eye?  It was "Brainwashed in Peking" for me!  My GOD?!  Why didn't I bring this whole frigging pile home?  What else do you need to know about the world except what is RIGHT STACKED UP HERE?  That "Labyrinths" - I didn't EVEN kind of almost half way AT ALL get beyond like Page 2 in my Literature Class back in the day.  And that Heinrich Boll - DITTO.  Left my German exam dreaming of moving BACK home with mother and becoming a hairdresser.  Sometimes it still seems like a good idea.

Look closely.  Quilts made out of Hawaiian prints.  I like that idea.

Avenues of aftereffects.

PORKY PIG GLASSES!  APRONS!  Pink Cutlery Holders and Jade Bakelite!  (I Die.)

Pyrex or Corelle?  Does Madame have a PREFerence?

Too cool for school.

LIKE ICE!

If you could have more than one house, would you have like a SERIOUS HOUSE and then, a kitschy, colorful house?

Where you could prance around in shoes like this and swing a bag like that on your arm?  Me?  Yes. Totally.

*****  Come back next week for: "Second Life; Return to Fairfax Flea"

Wisdom of Elders - A Late Night or Early Tomorrow Corner View

I was engaged in fairly intensive blog-avoidance and general lolly-gagging earlier in the week so I somehow missed the Corner View theme for the day.  But here's what I think about life when I'm flat on my face in the sand, lost in my own thoughts and letting the world pass me by:

This comes from my oldest Aunty (Auntie?) who is about 93 now.  She says that "you can get used to anything".

I have fully taken on board the practical common sense of accepting one's circumstances such as they are and the surprising truth that we human beings can actually "get used to" all sorts of (and sometimes awful things).  But I take it as more of a cautionary admonishment.  i.e.,  you CAN get (too) used to them but - you SHOULDN'T SETTLE  for them and you DO have choices! 

I suppose this is just a variation of that very very very old prayer: 

God Grant Me the Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot Change.  Courage to Change the Things I Can.  And the Wisdom to Know the Difference.

I don't actually believe in God, but I do believe in the God in me.

And no, that isn't Bentley either.  If only.

Valentine's Weekend 2010

This is not the reason why I moved to Los Angeles..........

But I will totally take it.  You can keep your longstemmed red roses wrapped in ribbons and plastic foil.

Give me the sea and the sun and a guy named Bentley.

Spring's Coming Soon

Did you all have a nice Valentine's Day?  I fell in love over the weekend.  With somebody with four legs.  Huge feet. Big brown eyes.  Floppy ears.  And a thick, wet tongue.  His name is (sigh) -----

Bentley!

I still love you Bentley!  I DO!

Have a GREAT WEEKEND EVERYBODY!

Wherever you are.