Monday Blues

I don't know.  I slept pretty well last night, but this has been one of those days when I just felt tired all day.  I didn't have that bad of a day at work, but I was still tired.  So, I came home, thinking I would relax with some knitting and some Netflix streaming, but all the shows I wanted to watch were temporarily unavailable.  Hmph.  Something about upgrading the quality.  Double hmph.  They looked fine to me to begin with.

So, I began to wonder if 5:00 PM was too early to go to bed.

Yeah, I figured.  If I went to bed that early, I'd be up at 2:00 AM, unable to get back to sleep.  So I dug out this old photograph of myself.  This was taken at Carney Park, the U.S. Military recreation center just north of Naples, Italy.  This was in 1991, or thereabouts.  I scanned it, wanting to get some of the orangeyness out of the print.

I wasn't able to.

 

After tinkering with it a bit, I thought, "Well, duh, dummy! Just go get the original!"  You see, this was always one of my favorite photographs of myself.  So much so that I sent off and got several reprints made.  Every one of the reprints had this orangey cast to it.  So I went and got the original and scanned it. 

Much better, except that I forgot to crop it before uploading it. And I didn't feel like re-doing it.

However, while looking for the original, I ran across this other photograph, also taken in 1991, of me and -- um, a stray dog.  

It was taken in the amphitheater in the ruins of Pompeii. 

A couple of my friends and I had gone right after I got over there. This dog attached himself to me and followed me all over the city. Or the ruins, rather. Of Pompeii. I'd have taken him home with me if I'd had a place to keep him.  Pets weren't allowed in the barracks.

I loved that dog. 


Funny thing is, there was a time when I thought I didn't like dogs.  I didn't dote on my dogs, or spend hours babying and pampering them.  I didn't dress them up, and I didn't let my life revolve around my dogs.  But then, I realized that what I wanted was a dog.  Not furry children, nor a surrogate spouse, nor a substitute friend.  A dog.  I wanted a dog. 

Once I realized that it was OK to let my dog be-- well, a dog-- that's when I realized, I love dogs.  The first time I knew that I had a special connection with them was long years ago.  I was wrestling with my cousin Jimmy at his house, in his living room floor, when his dog attacked him, to protect me.  I'll never forget the look on Jimmy's face.  Nor the sight of his dog Bess biting him in the butt. 

After all that, I went back and cropped that there photo anyway.

Hope you like it.