Tag Archives: annie

PUPPY LOVE: my mom and the mutt

Sandy-the-family-dog will soon make her stage debut as Sandy-the-Mutt (her actual namesake) in the local stage production of Annie (while Dave plays Daddy Warbucks).

We rescued Sandy years ago from the landfill where she’d been abandoned and was running wild eating trash and afraid of her own shadow, yet, she has never quit looking like a junkyard dog.  Even our love could not transform her into a beautiful show dog.  And though I fully believed a good grooming would be necessary for her to be a star: NO!  We are to leave her in this sad, overgrown condition for her role onstage.  She is untrained and undisciplined.

  • You can’t take her on a walk without getting your shoulder pulled out of socket.
  • She insists on laying right on your feet and constantly touching you, staring at you and basically loving the stuffing out of you.
  • She gets throroughly head-over-heels excited when you come in the door.
  • When you are eating anything, even though she is never allowed people food, Sandy sits very closely and tries to disguise the fact that she is lusting after your food.  But she isn’t allowed to beg.  So she sits there, acting all nonchalent and doesn’t actually look at you (because she knows that will get her in trouble), but she moves her eyes one way and then the next and then tilts her head so she can clearly watch you eating from the corner of her eye.  “Look away,” we tell her and she does, but then…yes, there it is: the corner of the eye thing again.  She is fooling no one.  I am amused by her persistance for lo these many years.  Hope must rise eternal in her heart that we will just one day give her all of our food.
  • She rolls around on the floor like a maniac when being petted.
  • If you give her a dryer sheet, she rubs her body all over it, because smelling fresh is her one true desire, though smelling fresh is pretty much impossible for Sandy.  She hates baths and thinks she is being punished and after years of hearing b-a-t-h spelled out, she is not fooled by our code.
  • She lives for love and lives to love.  The slightest kindness or gentle word from me and Sandy thumps a Morse-Code message of affection back to me with her ample tail.

 

Devotion.

Sandy and Dave have gotten closer during this shared theatrical experience, but she is my dog until Stormie shows up.  We were very close, mutt and me, during the Taiwan trip, but the minute Stormie was back on US soil, I was cast aside.  However,  if Rocky is anywhere in a 2 mile radius-her heart belongs to him and him alone.  Period.  He knows her and understands her more than anyone else.  And she pays him back with a fierce covenant commitment and over-the-top adoration.  They are “a boy and his dog.”  But Stephanie originally brought Sandy into the family, so she owns a part of Sandy, too.

She is a sweet dog.  She hates cats and is terrified of birds, but otherwise does not like conflict.  She loves people, seems to believe the best of everyone, and melts at a kind word and a pat on the head.  That is really all takes to be loved by Sandy forever.  She doesn’t really enjoy playing horsie with the grandkids, but is gentle and longsuffering with them anyway.

Sandy is a Phlegmatic-Sanguine.  She loves people and she loves peacefulness and having everybody just get along.  Just like my mom.  No wonder I adore her: the dog, I mean, but my mom, too.  Yes.  They are both lovely and loveable.  And they are very close friends, as well.  They may even favor one another a little.

 

My mom  and Sandy-the-Dog are probably my two most reliable and exuberant cheerleaders in life, my most trusted allies.  Aren’t they adorable?

Chia Dave

I wrote about Dave going bald for his role in Annie as Daddy Warbucks here.

 

Got these cute pictures of Poppa, aka Daddy Warbucks, with our very own little Annie (more commonly known as Gemma) and Sandy-the-Family-Dog.  And of Poppa-now-bald with grandbebes Hunter, Gemma May and Guinivere (who may or may not be tormenting the dog).

Meanwhile, Bryan-the-Blogger couldn’t resist messing with a photo of Dave because of what I wrote here.  This is Chia Dave.

Tsk.

Bald by Choice…no, really!

Dave did it.

He chose baldness for his role in the upcoming Prairie Playhouse production of Annie as Lt. General Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks.  I have long dreaded the day.

He got a shorter haircut a couple of weeks ago and shaved all the facial hair to try to “warm me up” to the idea.

 

Then we gathered the family for the dastardly deed so the grandbebes wouldn’t be freaked out by him, but they kind of are.

Dave is bald.

A buzz and a Bic and voila.  A huge pile of his thick, healthy, black with ever-so-few white hairs was vacuumed up and disposed of as if there is no concern for its future return.  And perhaps there is not.  For when I had the courage to touch it the following day, it was so thickly populated with little hair buds that it was like Velcro – not at all smooth the way a truly bald man’s head might be.

“It will grow back,” Dave promises me each time he sees me eyeing him warily.

So he is bald to be Daddy Warbucks.

But I keep wondering if I could get some seed and turn him into a gardening experiment like this?

Dave and his Bic are going to have to be very close friends for the next TWO MONTHS!  Yikes!….Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Tomorrow, tomorrow Dave’s hair will grow back…

Suspenders @ The Armory

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Renaissance Man

Dave-the-husband writes, paints, teaches, husbands, fathers, grandfathers and now he is acting again.  You can catch him this month in the newly renovated/restored Armory in Brighton with The Platte Valley Players.  He starts rehearsals this weekend for his next role as Daddy Warbucks in “Annie ~ The Musical” for Prairie Playhouse Productions. 

He says he is shaving his head.

I am shaking mine.  I guess I’ll be able to say, “I knew him when…”  But he still has to take out the trash.

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