Thursday 9 October 2014

"How long is forever?

Sometimes, just one second."

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


The answer to the 'how many years does a cockapoo live?' question is this: at LEAST 14 YEARS. That's right, a cockapoo's MINIMUM lifespan is 14 years, and they've been known to keep wagging for 20! For me, this gives birth to the idea of ... well, giving birth. Not the 9 month pregnancy with its bloating and ballooning, mood swings or morning sickness, of course. Nor the excruciating pain or heavy drugs of delivery, sleepless nights with a newborn (save a few I'm sure), changing countless messy diapers, spit up, throw up, dribbling and screaming... 

BUT, the 20 year lifespan didn't stop the ever vocal Peanut Gallery part of my brain  saying immediately upon learning these stats the seemingly benign: "You're already [so and so age], so that will make you SO AND SO by the time your puppy leaps through the pearly gates of doggie heaven!" to which The Little Bastard part of my brain pipes in with the perfectly timed and bludgeoning remark "IF it lives that long ... if YOU live that long".

 Hm. 



This is as good a time as any to introduce you to Peanut Gallery (we shall call her PG for short) and The Little Bastard (TLB) as they may well make a few appearances in this blog. The term "Peanut Gallery" was an American vaudeville term used to refer to the uppermost or hindmost seats in a theatre which were also the cheapest (see diagram). These seats were generally filled by unsophisticated, uneducated and often rowdy spectators whose criticisms were seen as unimportant and insignificant. They were known to throw peanuts, the cheapest snack at the theatre, onto the stage to voice their displeasure (what a lousy waste of peanuts).
PG and TLB

 In the case of this blog, PG represents that part of my psyche that chimes in with what seem to be relatively harmless observations or criticisms of myself or my actions. These I am often able to easily brush off as unimportant or insignificant.  In other words: "No remarks from the Peanut Gallery!" But The Little Bastard is just as his name describes. Often PG will feed TLB a line and he will gobble it up, and spit it back out at me, personally and hurtfully heckling away with malicious intent. In the diagram, TLB is represented by the first row professional heckler.


What does any of this 

have to do with puppies you ask?




4 comments:

  1. Love this Mary! Keep it up! I use a lot of exclamation points! What is wrong with me? (< that's not an exclamation point;)

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  2. Am 'lapping' it up. Sending big anti-depressant hugs to you both from Snuffs.

    ReplyDelete