Disappointment

Scrappy is disappointed.  Ever since the day we went to the buffalo park, either it's been too hot to walk, or raining, or my back has killed me.  My back?  Well, I think standing in one spot in the heat waiting for the buffalo ride started it... then, Monday morning last week, I helped put up a fabric roll and it went bad on me.  How bad?  I took half a vacation day and went home at 9 AM.  It was mostly cleared up (nod, nod, wink, wink) until  the motor cover incident.  You see, we have fabric for motor covers (sold on Amazon.com BTW) on a big lumpy, fuzzy roll too heavy for one person to easily pick up and with too small a core to put a pole through.  So I had someone far mightier than I put it on our "cradle", got it started on the table, cut the pieces- but when I went to roll it back up (remember, not on a pole, the "lift and tug" method trashed it out again.  I went from, "No, I don't mind working Saturday", to, "better get someone else.  I think walking will be challenging enough."

One motor cover, yours for $44.95 on Amazon

So when my back finally felt akin to normal Tuesday, I thought, now Scrappy will be happy.  Then, at the light at Speedway Drive, the first drop hit the windshield.

"Passing bird,"  I told myself.
Second drop hits.
"Perhaps it's just some little bitty raincloud."

This is 4 hours later.  No walk today either.



But you know, a lot of people have disappointment.  Take my Bloggy pal Bobby G.  He lives in the heart of ghetto land, in a house that became his home before urban blight and politicians sweeping gang crime under the rug turned the neighborhood into a "top ten places to avoid" on TripAdvisor.  Boomcars go past at all hours.  Vehicles will mysteriously appear on the street, drivers walk to a nearby house for five or ten minutes, drive away.  Garbage dumped in his yard, kids left to run wild peeking into his mail box.  Grown men urinating in the middle of the street.  And because of the economics of things, for him to relocate would take Ed McMahon rising from his grave with a check from Publishers Clearing House.

If anyone has a right to be disappointed, Bobby and his Mrs. do.

But instead of whining, he and his wife built the property into an oasis.  Carefully tended flowers, well kept lawn.  A feeding place for squirrels and bunnies, butterflies and birds.  With abandoned and rental properties on all sides, he shows the world what it's like to care, to have pride.

His neighbors, driven by little more than sex, drugs, and how best to avoid work, don't care.  Don't see.  But if they opened their almost more animal than human eyes and looked around, they'd see it.

They'd see hope.


Scrappy is disappointed.  But he knows.  Even if it's only a trip to the bark park, like Saturday:

Brinkley (upside down), Hazel (who I think was in heat), and the mighty Adler.

Scrappy just before getting pounded by Laurie.

The whole gang: Georgia, Brinkley, Hazel, Georgia's mom, Adler, our hero, Adler's mom.

He knows that disappointment is a temporary thing, a state of mind.  And like Bob, he'd rather fill that mind space with hope.