Just a few things I would like to mention…

Toad’s haircut

Remember Toad?

SHE GOT HER SUMMER HAIRCUT!

She’s still the happiest little Piggy Toad on the planet.

Speaking of “Toad”

I saw this dead, flattened frog in the parking lot at work.  I took a picture of it.  I don’t know why.

The fact that I noticed this, photographed it, and am now broadcasting it to the whole wide world all of a sudden makes me feel all kinds of awkward.

“Glass & Wood”

Allie writes such good words.

There are some things I need to let go of – the broken AND the good.

I’m trying.

Jon licks the wound

I used to believe Heather B. Armstrong to be the funniest person on the internet.

But then Jon went and licked the wound.

And just like that, the queen was dethroned.

(I know – this was almost a year ago.  But I still think about it all the time, and still LOL out loud.  It goes like this: LOLOL.)

Mark and John are here!

Also, Bruce!  But he wasn’t in the picture.

These men are the greatest.  Seriously.  They’re totally a big deal, but they still treat me like I’M the big deal – even though my hair looked COMPLETELY FLAT on top.  Horizontal.  Kansan.  I could balance an egg on that noggin.  Someone get this girl a teasing comb, stat.

And last, but most certainly not least…

I am signed up for a seminar tonight called Sex, Lies, and Rattlesnakes.  This is my own special way of “getting out there” – so don’t judge me, people.  I might wind up sucking the poisonous snake venom from your leg someday.

Monday was a paid holiday, and I am taking tomorrow and Friday off.  That makes this a 2 day work week, and today my Friday.  Amen.

I’m not very good at “vacation.”  I travel a lot, and use every minute of the (very generous) vacation time that I am given – but I never take the time to just relax.  Relaxing makes me feel lazy – I’m too task-oriented and high-strung to relax*.  If I take time off, it is usually because I am flying to a wedding, or hitting the proverbial road, or spending a busy long weekend with friends – or, in the case of this week, climbing mountains and screaming at total strangers.

Let’s start with the first thing: climbing mountains.  Over the weekend, I absolutely destroyed the knuckles on my left hand.  How do I always wind up with bloody knuckles?  I mean, honestly – am I a Neanderthal, dragging my hands on the gravel behind me?  I never remember scraping them – I just look down and realize, “Oh, there are my bones.”  “Oh, there is blood.”  And then I spend the next 10 days breaking open the scabs every time I bend my fingers.

Type type type.  This is a sacrifice.

We’ll see if the weather allows for me to climb two 14ers in the next couple of days.

As for the screaming at total strangers, well – when two pit bulls attacked my dear old dog Rowdy, snarling and growling and biting, and their owner made no move to stop them, it felt like a fair trade.  Your dog snaps, I snap.

Obscenities were screamed (yes, the worst of the bad words), as well as a threat to call the police.  It was out of control.  I was out of control.

Maybe I need a vacation after all.

*I need** an intervention.  Seriously.  I don’t think I will ever relax unless someone hog-ties me and forces me to.

**You know what ELSE I need?   Seven fillings.  I went to the dentist and they found SEVEN cavities.  I have excellent dental hygiene, and haven’t had a cavity in 10 years.  What is going ON?  It’s going to be a 4-hour torture session (not to mention a hefty wad of cash) to get these bad boys taken care of.

Gah, I say.  GAH.

My parents have three dogs, Rowdy, Maci, and Kodi.

Kodi is the cutest.  That’s not favoritism – it’s just fact.  I mean, look at her happy dog perma-grin:

Her name is Kodi, but mostly we call her Toad.  She’s this ridiculous, squatty little Chow mix, with short legs and a barrel chest.  She has so much fur, she looks like a tank – but in the summers, my parents have her shaved to keep her cool.  And then, she looks like a little pig.

The best thing about Toad is that her tail is always wagging, no matter what.  She wags when she sees you, she wags when she’s looking out the window, she wags when she’s all alone in the backyard, she wags when she gets fed, she wags when she’s lying on the living room floor, she wags when she hears voices – even if they’re not talking to her.  The only time that she didn’t wag was when she was entered in a tail-wagging contest at the Puppy Parade – then she stood stone still.

The remarkable thing is that Toad has bone spurs on her spine that keep her in a constant state of discomfort.  She has trouble sitting from a standing position, or standing from a sitting position.  She is stiff and awkward.  She is in pain.

But she wags anyway.

I want to be like Toad.

I want to wag anyway – even when nobody’s looking and I’m all alone.

I am currently dog-sitting for a delightful dog named Shelby.  She jumps the fence and eats band-aids out of the trash can, but I like her anyway.  Yesterday morning, I took her to the dog park to let her run, and she immediately befriended a greyhound.  She chased it around, but unfortunately, did not have the capacity to understand that she was chasing a GREYHOUND, so she never quite caught up.

Shelby has no idea that she’s just a little mutt.

Sometimes, I wish that I didn’t know my limitations – that I felt free to run as hard and fast as I can, giving no thought to my deficiencies or how I stack up against others – just completely at rest with who I am.

I should take a lesson from the little mongrel.

- – - – - – - -

And now, tidbits worth mentioning but not really worth blogging about:

1) People, the weather.  My stars.  Last year, this didn’t happen until October 2 – but I am thrilled to report that this year, the change happened a few days early.

2) I have never seen anything so magical.  Is this too good to be true? Because I am coveting like you would not believe.

3) I finished my EP.  I’m listening to it right now on my headphones!  This IS worth blogging about, just not yet.  Stay tuned – I cannot wait for you to hear it!

4) And I know that you’ve been on the edge of your seat all weekend, so: no, I still have not barfed since I was 14.  Don’t you worry your pretty little head for one tiny second.  All better.  Back at work.  Just caused a coffee flood in the kitchen.

Everything is back to normal.

I am resurrecting from the blog-dead.

Maybe if I say it out loud, it will stick.

Where have I been?  Oh, you know.  Working.  Working out.  Thinking.  Reading.  Watching some more “Friday Night Lights.”  Breathing.

I spent the long weekend in Colorado Springs at my parent’s new house – they moved in June, and I hadn’t made it out until now.  Their new house is a charmer, and the Springs is a beautiful city.  On Saturday morning, we hiked the Incline, a stretch of old railroad tracks that go straight (no, seriously: STRAIGHT) up a mountain side – 2,000 feet of elevation gain in less than a mile, and then a 4-mile hike down.

To give you an idea:

I was pleasantly surprised to wake up the following morning to find that I wasn’t even sore.  Who’s been working out?  [Thumbs] This girl.

Another great thing about the weekend was hanging out with our 3 dogs, Rowdy, Maci, and Kodi.  There is something great about having dogs around.  They don’t need you to say anything, and they don’t need to talk.  They just provide pleasant company – sometimes some vomit on the floor, but mostly, just pleasant company.

On the flight out to Denver, I saw a gorgeous man.  He was so attractive: tall and bearded and broad-shouldered and manly – rugged, like Aragorn.  I didn’t talk to him, though – so the next best thing would be to mention him here.  I’m just reminding myself that I do, in fact, have a heart that beats.

On the flight back to Nashville, I recognized two outrageously successful songwriters who happen to be married, and introduced myself to them.  When I did, the woman fell all over herself: “You’re… Annie PARsons?  THE Annie Parsons?”  My heart stopped – this woman KNEW WHO I WAS?  I mean, word travels fast – especially in Nashville – and I know that I’m AMAZING (there is such a need for a Sarcasm font), but could it be that someone who wrote a CMA and ACM Song of the Year had stumbled across my name?

But then.  I had to correct her.  No, she did not used to babysit for me when she was in high school.

Sigh.  Steady on.

I cannot look at the Nashville Humane Society website.

It breaks my heart into a million little pieces.

I want to save every dog without a home.

Or at least this one.

Her name is Annie, too.

Anyone who beats or abandons a pet should be put in jail.

But instead, it’s the dogs that wind up in cages.

I want to save them all.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am house-sitting / dog-sitting this weekend.  Sleeping in a king size bed is weird.  I like my little double mattress.  The king bed just feels so… huge, and excessive, and unnecessary, and lonely.

Oh!  But it’s not lonely when you have two gigantic Labradors to share the space!

Gah.  I will never understand people who let their dogs sleep on the bed (sorry, Becca, and all you other crazy dog people).

Don’t get me wrong – I love dogs.  I LOVE them.  But there is a reason that L.L. Bean is still in business, and I’m pretty sure that it has nothing to do with their multi-colored fleeces.  Although the Christmas 2006 Parsons family might beg to differ:

When I was a little girl, there were a couple of movies that I watched over and over again. All of them were taped straight off TV – back when Sunday nights meant family movies on ABC, back when VCR’s had the pop-up compartment for the videotape, back when we lived in San Jose, CA.

I knew – and still know – every word (dialogue and lyric), every dance, and every nuance to “The Sound of Music.” I watched some portion of it every single day from age 4-6. I also obsessed over “Annie”; how could I not? I thought the idea of being an orphan was romantic (sorry, Mom and Dad), and the opening song, “Maybe,” remains one of my favorite melodies to this day.

And then there was a 1985 Disney film called “The Journey of Natty Gann.” I have not watched it since probably 1989, and had totally forgotten about it until about a month ago. As soon as I thought of it, I added it to my Netflix queue, and finally re-watched it last night.

I never realized how formative this movie was for me.

Here’s the plot summary, taken from IMDB:

Natty Gann is a twelve-year old Depression era girl whose single-parent father leaves her behind in Chicago while he goes to Washington State to look for work in the timber industry. Natty runs away from the guardian she was left with to follow Dad. She befriends and is befriended by a wolf that has been abused in dog fights, hops a freight train west, and is presumed dead when her wallet is found after the train crashes. Dad gets bitter and endangers himself in his new job. Meanwhile Natty has a series of adventures and mis-adventures in various farmhouses, police stations, hobo camps, reform schools, and boxcars.

Natty Gann’s sense of adventure, fear, courage, longing for home, and love for dogs convinces me that I absorbed so much from this movie. I only wish that John Cusack had been my first kiss.

A couple of things that struck me, this time around:

1. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed the words “damn” and “shit.”
2. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed kids being hit in the face.
3. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed dog fights and blood.
4. In 1985, a “PG” rating allowed sexual predators and dangerous men.

See – now you HAVE to watch it. It’s so exciting!

Go back and watch a movie that you haven’t seen since early childhood. I’m convinced that you’ll be struck with something – something deep inside of you, something formative, something that you never realized had a source.

I mean, honestly. Why else would I have a secret-yet-unsquelchable desire to name my firstborn “Fievel”?

I did. Or at least one. I let the dog out.

While the Handy Graham is in Pennsylvania with his family for Thanksgiving, some of us Nashville stragglers are splitting dog-duty. It seems that this boy cannot turn away a stray, and last week, he found a delightful little red mutt that we are all still trying to name. Any ideas?

This morning, after I dropped off Julie at the airport at 5:30am, I headed to take care of the Dog That I Call Jasper For Now. And after he scarfed down his food, I sat on the kitchen floor and he crawled into my lap and we snuggled for an hour. I was saying things like “Who’s a good boy? Who? Yes you are. YES YOU ARE!” It was great, and terribly animal-nerdy (which is a Parsons’ trait). Then I put him in the backyard, and headed home to get ready for work.

Tonight, my friend Josh is dropping me at the airport, and I’ll fly to Kansas City to be with my family for the holiday weekend. Apparently, Micah (5) is learning to set the table, and Tyler (3) cannot stop talking about pie. It’s going to be a good Thanksgiving.

This year, I’m thankful for my Nash-life. I’m thankful for the friends who have surrounded me here – for being my airport rides and my running buddies and my emotional contacts, making the fuzzy things clear. I’m thankful for the friends who live far away, and yet still find ways to love me and encourage me across the miles. I’m thankful for a job that pays my bills. I’m thankful for a church that feeds my soul. I’m thankful for my trusty steed of a Honda that hasn’t broken down in over a year. I’m thankful for Whole Foods Market, and the fact that they’re serving free samples of stuffing and mashed potatoes all week. I’m thankful that despite that fact, I still fit into my black pants (booyah!). I’m thankful for musicians so much better than me. I’m thankful for magical blog moments, like happened yesterday. I’m thankful for the opportunity to pursue the things that I want to pursue. I’m thankful for a coffee pot with brew-pause, so I can pour myself a cup before the pot is full. I’m thankful for the cooler weather (sweet Mother of Pearl, am I ever thankful). I’m thankful for the chance to spend the morning snuggling with a sweet dog. I’m thankful for family members who, despite our idiosyncrasies and freakish moments, totally love each other. I’m thankful that the idea of spending the holiday with my family is a welcome, warm-fuzzy thought. I’m thankful for grace, because Lord knows that I need it.

And I’m thankful that this list could go on and on. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Vicious? from Annie Parsons on Vimeo.

And this is AFTER we’ve become “friends.”

I won’t lie: this is a little bit frightening. But I’m a PARSONS, damn it. I’m from a long line of dog wranglers, and I’m going to make good Christians out of these German Shepherds if it’s the last thing I do.

But it very well might be the last thing I do.