The End (Plus the Ten in Ten Giveaway Post--Day 5 (One More Bloggy Boot Camp Ticket)

The End is the name of today's post, so don't get confused and think I'm signalling the end of the Ten in Ten's. We're only half-way through the giveways, go get your linky fingers ready.



Today's giveaway is a repeat of yesterday's giveway--Bloggy Boot Camp in St. George. Click here for deets. Make sure you comment so I can count your entries. Winner will be chosen late tonight. Good luck!

Now for today's post:

Lulu's life has been spared four times this week. Twice I dug a hunk of rawhide out of her throat. (I know, Springrose, NO MORE RAWHIDE! I get it!)


And then she got herself and her best friend, Pearl, who lives next door, all tangled up in her chain. They were both practically asphyxiated by the time they were rescued.



And then she got wounded. In a dog fight or something. Something bit her. Or something. Alls I know is that she wouldn't move all day long. Do you know how long all day long is? In dog years? It's ALLLLLLL DAYYYYYY LOOOOONG! I was scared half to death and I practically broke my back lifting her limp and lifeless body off the floor and onto my bed so I could nurse her back to health with my leaky faucet eyeballs.



Seriously, I need to upgrade my stone cold heart for a newer model because this one is defective. I thought stone came with a warranty against leaky faucets eyeballs, but today I needed a plumber. Fer reals. The plumber found some kryptonite stuck in the drainage pipe leading from my heart to my eyeballs. Krytonite covered in dog hair. We're going to send the hair to the lab to be tested, but it's looking like pure bred Golden Retreiver.




Should I just delete that whole paragraph? Because really it's just a long and confusing way to tell you that two words make me bawl like a baby. The End. I hate those words. Especially when I think of applying them to Lulu and me.



I've heard those words too often lately. Seems like everybodies saying The End. Several of my friends and their hubs are saying those words. To each other. WAAAAAAAAH! Don't they know those are the two loneliest words on the face of the earth?


Speaking of sending things to the lab to be tested, my brother Stephen spit into a cup, repeatedly and sent it off for DNA testing. He wanted to find out who he is and where he came from.

It's a question I've ignored for most of my life. Alls I knew was I came from Utah--a fact that I kept on the down-low, being as I got tired of people apologizing every time I revealed this information about my origins.

Don't think less of me, but when I was a teacher at BYU-H I designed two comp and lit courses. One was entitled Ethical Complexity and Simple Truth. And the other was Identity Construction and Recontruction.

Identity was always an interesting topic in Hawaii because everyone there is mixed plate, as they call themselves. In the dog world they call it mutt. The Polynesians though, they know who they are and where they come from. They celebrate it through music and dance and oral history.

My kids, on the other hand, had no idea who they were and where they came from. And neither did I. I hated it when they'd come home from school asking about their heritage for a project they were doing--a cultural costume they had to make or a display board of their cultural identity. Sometimes I would tell them we were Irish. Other times I'd say Scottish or Enlgish, but the truth is, I had no idea.

My kids just thought they were local kine. Home grown in Hawaii. Until 3rd grade. When other people started telling them who they were. They were haole (slang for white person).

There are three types of haoles in Hawaii--dumb haoles, stupid haoles, and go-back-to-where-you-came-from-haoles. I'll never forget the first time my now fourteen-year-old was called one of those three types of haole. He came home confused. "Mom, am I a haole?" When I told him yes, he said "Ah, so junk!"

Haole blood is the least desirable blood to having running through your veins in Hawaii. But Portagee blood is a close second.

I'll also never forget the day I learned my great grandmother Constance, who came from Bombay, India, wasn't Indian at all. She was Portuguese.

"What!? We're Haole AND Portagee?" My son moaned.

Well now, thanks to my brother, I officially know who I am and where I came from. And it's not England or Ireland or Portugal or India. It's Orcadian.

I'm a freakin' Orc.

I think I'll just keep this news to myself.

At least until after the contest is over.

Good Mood Gig from SAM-e

P.S. Lulu is doing much better now. I called the Vet and asked her what to do. She said to force feed her some chicken soup. I had to used a syringe, but it worked! I

I'd like to bear my testimony that chicken soup is true.

(And so is gangsta rapping.)