Wet Sacks and a Bowl Game

Logically considered, Zen may be full of contradictions and repetitions. But as it stands above all things, it goes serenely on its own way. - D. T. Suzuki in the Zen Calendar (December 14, 2002).

Day 326. Christmas Eve. One hour until Christmas. Estimated time of completion of preparation for Christmas morning: two and one half hours. I am grateful for two things at this moment: 1) I had the great and good sense to bear only one child; 2) I am not bearing said child in a barn and laying him in a manger. The Christmas story can really give a woman some perspective. I will not complain about my To Do list. It does not include birthing a Savior into the world in the attendance of cows and donkeys. Gassho, Mary, for your courage and strength.

I had plans to write something moving and meaningful tonight. Those plans were abruptly aborted when I reached for the colorful Christmas sacks I had stacked (so that my wrapping this evening would be fast and efficient) and found them thoroughly dampened with dog pee. The culprit is Jake, the Chihuahua my son is being paid a large sum to sit for while his owners are out of town. How a dog Jake's size could POSSIBLY emit that much pee is beyond my comprehension. How a brilliant college student could neglect him for the amount of time it must have required to store that much liquid in a Chihuahua sized bladder is even more baffling. I'm thinking a good parent would dock the college student's dog sitting money in an amount substantially above the cost of several Christmas sacks. I will definitely need to recoup some compensation for the pain and suffering of salvaging the sacks. One wonders if Santa ever had to improvise following a similar incident, though I always envisioned his reindeer as perfectly housebroken.

I must be really tired, because I haven't the slightest inclination to even attempt to blog something other than the exact Reality I am depicting. It will simply have to do. It will actually do quite well, because this present moment in Reality happens to include a victory by the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes at the Hawaii Bowl. Spectacular. Even if I did have to listen to my son't color commentary for the entire game. I now know more inside information about the Tulsa football players than I would ever voluntarily seek to discover. It's all good. There are worse ways to spend Christmas Eve.

If someone had told me a year ago that on Christmas Eve I would be serenely typing a blog about dog pee and a bowl game my son should have been playing in but wasn't (in Hawaii, for Buddha's sake!) I would have laughed so hard I might have peed on the Christmas sacks. I would credit zazen for my serenity, but I am too busy not attaining anything through it. Suffice it to say, I believe my equanimity is back. At least for now.

Peace on Earth. Compassion to us all.

Gassho,

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