My dandylions are looking so beautiful. Little yellow smiling faces scattered here and there all across the plain, overdone green of my neverending lawn. Together they end up being so much more striking than the pansies or the tulips and daffodils. The lawnmower the landlord lets us use is broken, hiding away in our shed, so it looks like nature is taking over our little plain-it's like liitle, tiny square house in the midst of a waving prarie. Out back my favorite spring flower is blooming. It is this little green weed that grows in little clusters when spring is just getting going. Tiny little purple tufts start growing out the edges, and it overtakes places where there isn't much grass. It doesn't smaell nice, but I always thought that faries would hide amongst it. It always seems to border those forgotten places that noone cares to look it. The landlord's son mowed the nighboring house yesterday and I sat inside , really sad as i thought my bountiful treasure would the next to get decimated. Fortunately , it got dark!
When I was very young I would hide in the space between my grandmother's house wall, fence and the nieghbors yard. The nieghbors kept there place up pretty well, but they let the fence get overgrown with honeysuckle as it gave them a barrier to the wrongs that went on in my grandmaw's house. To see through the fence, you had to pry back layers and layers of honeysuckle vines, and whatever other green delights grew in that shady spot. It had this thick, rich, wet, moist smell made up of old decaying plants. In the blasting Texas sun, being surrounded by that smell and the deep shadows was like a tiny bit of bliss.
I would sit there for hours during the summer, and in the spring I would find this little plant growing-little purple fey flowers. Nobody ever looked back there so I would just hide and dream. I had the ratty, stinky, chow mongrel Monkey as my companion. Her chain would get so tangled up, but she could still worm her way to my secret spot. She would join me, with her stinky dog smell and together we would cuddle. She too, wanted to escape.
It is rather funny that she was called monkey, as my grandmaw said monkey was a slang word for pussy. Yet she called the dog monkey. I think we at one point had another dog also named monkey. You see , my family has this way with names-it is a bad way. The border collie my GGrandmum got form the humane society was named Happy. He was the most unhappy dog I have ever seen. He sat on a chain for ten years and barked. I would try to pet him but he would jump on my legs and leave bloody claw marks. Occasionally my evil GGmum would wonder out to feed him and yell at him. When the old bitch died we took happy out to our place. he spent some time -a year or two-hanging out with my brother's bird dogs in our backyard. Eventually we got a little, tiny pink house at the top of a hill, centered on twenty acres of coastal pasture. We let the dogs loose and Happy disappered after two days. He was so old and arthritic but you could see this sad spark of excitement in his eyes. I can only hope Happy found a bit of happiness at the end.
If it was only dog names that went wrong it would be reasonable, however the names that were given to members of the family were the real tragedy. My mother's two brothers had real names-however they were known to all as Beaver and PeeWee. No wonder they are felons. My mum grew up being known by Delores Anne. Turns out this was her dad's old girlfriends name. Turn's out in ninth grade , he wasn't her real dad. She didn't know her real name or her real dad. The schhol insisted that she go by her real name. Unfortunatley my Gmum had named my mom after her uncle. My mother got stuck with the name Jimmie Jo. Why torture your kid that way? My poor mom got the holy crap beat out of her at school a lot as she was a pretty white girl with a boy's name at a school mostly populated with minorities.
So it only gets worse. My mum has kids. They spend quite a while trying to stick my brother with the nickname Pumkin. Thank god that didn't go over. My mom picks my middle name. It sounds all nice until I realize in high school that she thought it was Michelle, just spelled differently-nope. No wonder I never could spell it. Everone says what a beautiful middle name. I say "thanks. " I guess. My sister got cursed with the southern name problem. You want to name your little girl three or four names? Just cram them altogether. Marysue, bettyjo lynn alberts etc. So she has two first names and a middle name-none of which anybody actually calls her-she got stuck being little missy-missy to the day.
Oh yeah, I spelled my son's middle name incorrectly :) Issac rather than Isaac- It's the um, greek spelling. Don't make women who have just given birth name children! Especially with the genetic tendencies present in our family.
well back to lovin my little yellow dandies.
Puppy
