My Dogs Have Tissues

I know, I am famous for my misspellings.


I freely admit that I spell like a frog on acid, the hippy-drug acid not the etch-your-glass acid. But the title is not a typo or misspelling. I know Dear Reader, you think that I mean to say that my dogs have issues. And as well you know, I have rat terriers, blind border collies and a orphan drug dog rescued from a dysfunctional family, so it is easy to jump to the conclusion that I mean to tell you today that my dogs have issues. And for sure they may, but today they have tissues.



A whole box to be exact! They did this on my bed. You're right Dear Reader, when you say, "most likely because they have issues." It appeared from the evidence that they were after the glue in the cardboard box that once contained the tissues. Next time I just leave them some glue in their dish. Or maybe they would like glue in its raw form and I'll have Dirt trim feet on the livestock for them.

Hey, today is Fat Tuesday, a celebration I've never really gotten into.

One time, some friends took me up to the Seattle celebration of it back in '78. Uh, I'll grant you that I was very rebellious at that time in my life, but the "whole wander city alley ways drunk out of your mind in the middle of winter" thing?, not my ideer of fun.

And then in 2001 the Pioneer Square business sponsored Fat Tuesday "celebration" turned violent and a young man was murdered, kicked and stomped to death in a crowd of people, businesses were looted, a woman was hit by a car, there were many injuries, hospital emergency rooms were packed and seemily every cop in Seattle was all over the situation but not making much of a dent in the violence. Then the next morning the region had an earthquake, the epi center was sixty miles away from Seattle's Pioneer Square, yet it was in the Square where the most damage occured. There were many business that had to close down because the front of their buildings were in a heap on the sidewalks, they were connected to those buildings or their building had incurred such structural damage as to close them until they could be repaired. Connect the dots?

Come on, you're really going to tell me that all those people in the most famous of all Fat Tuesday celebrating regions are really ready to settle down to a good bout of self abnegation for the next forty days when they get up tomorrow morning? I didn't think so.

There is a huge difference between eating up all the eggs and meat before the fast starts and running around naked in a crowd of rebellious sin-filled drunks.

So we will have a bit of indulgence today, a little feast perhaps before the fast, in the form of cake (already had a bit of chocolate with my coffee), but no nakedness, no debauchary, no reveling in sin.

Hey, you might say, "You need to eat a box of tissues to assuage your issues today," eh?

Dear Reader, perhaps you and I should take time today to listen to God, is He calling us to a deeper discipline? Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in accord with the calendar, maybe next week, maybe in the middle of tonight on Saturday. Sometimes He taps us when we least expect it. Sometimes we least expect it when it is blatantly obvious and written on someone else's calendar.