You've Goat to be Kidding Me

Recently, goats have become a topic of discussion. The only time I've been around a goat was the summer I volunteered at the Louisville Zoo and had to help medicate a goat who'd tried to get too friendly with a female goat. She hit him where it hurt -- in his boys. So I got to know that goat a little too intimately as we treated his wound. Anyway....

My friend Dana treated me to a song that was written for her about eating goat for Jesus. Here's the song and the story behind it as told by Dana:

"Eating Goat for Jesus"

Eating goat for Jesus, Eating goat for Jesus
Don't you know that he sees us
Eating goat for Jesus.
Baked, boiled or fried he is always by our side
Eating goat for Jesus.
Workin' in the autoclave all day hopin' a soul to save
Eating goat for Jesus.

The song was written by my dear friend and co worker Karen Belle Bob that is not her given name but a nick name some of us use around the office. She grew up in Kentucky and reminds me of a southern belle. Anyway, the first year I went to the Dominican Republic I was nervous for a number of reasons. First, it was very much out of my comfort zone. Second, I really do not like to get dirty and third, I just did not know what I was getting my self into especially working in the autoclave. We use the autoclave to sterilize the instruments for surgery. I am a travel agent and as I remind the medical team every year I am a NON MEDICAL person. I feel like that disclaimer needs to be made so that the Doctors do not have too high of expectations of me. The other thing that made me a bit nervous was that I heard that the Dominicans eat goat (on purpose.) I am a true Midwesterner, I like fowl and beef. On occasion, I will get real exotic and eat a crab cake but by and large I do not venture from the fowl and beef rule I have established for myself. I am also not the type of traveler that wants to emerge herself in the culture once she arrives in her foreign county and eat and drink what the locals do. When I returned from my trip the first year Karen asked how my "Eating Goat for Jesus" went. The phrase stuck and that is what we now call my mission trips. Karen is quirky like me and one night when she could not get to sleep she was thinking about me and my trip and decided I needed a song so she came up with these lyrics.

The second matter of goat came up when I was watching "Notting Hill" on DVD. In one scene, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant discuss the Marc Chagall print hanging in Hugh's character's living room. The painting is La Mariee and has a couple drifting skyward with a goat playing the violin. Julia says: "Happiness isn't happiness unless there's a violin-playing goat." How true. I've never experienced such happiness. My friend Leah called me from the National Gallery of Art a week or so after I watched the movie cuz I'd used the quote in a letter to her. At the time, I couldn't remember the name of the painting so I called Dana and the hunt began. I'd emailed the quote to her along with a link to the print so she was trying to find it in her email. Dana, admittedly, isn't the quickest when it comes to the world of email but she did find it. By the time I called Leah back, she'd since left the gallery but goat was still the topic of the day.

Heavenly CrossDressing

My sister's and brother's father died last week. Mr. Bradshaw had been ill for a while but that never makes the end easy for anyone. I'll always remember him as a kind man and handsome. My late brother, Jaimie, resembled his father and I was always proud to show my brother off as I thought he was quite the looker.

I called my sister tonight to see how her trip from Indiana to North Carolina went since that's where Mr. Bradshaw was laid to rest. Leave it to us to have a conversation about a funeral and end up laughing with tears in our eyes.

Gina told me that for reasons unbeknownst to her, Betty, the widower, had Mr. Bradshaw laid to rest in a red dress with black ruffles. Not what you'd expect for a man who was decorated with military honors while in the 82nd Airborne. My sister and I were already imagining her dad in heaven, yakkin' it up with our mom and brother and making new friends with all the cross-dressers. The Army guys weren't too friendly to him, however.

RIP Mr. Bradshaw. You can pay Betty back when she crosses over.

GirlonaGuzzi

Yup. I was girlonaguzzi today and it looks like I will be moving forward.
No. I didn't get rid of Thor, my beloved.

Here's the skinny.

For the last couple of months, I've been frequenting bike club meetings of the ABVMC (Atlantic Beach Vintage M/C) and have been enjoying the social time of the gatherings. The club has a diverse group of members and not all (yours truly) members are vintage bike owners although that is the primary focus of the club.

One of the members, Kurt, is the owner of the local Moto Guzzi dealership and at last night's meeting, he was having discussion about his shop and the direction it needs to take. One such direction is the inclusion of women as potential customers since the female rider is the quickest growing demographic of today's motorcycling community. He said he needed to add a female to his staff but he didn't know any women riders who were passionate about riding and had an interest in the motorcycling industry. Then he started looking around the restaurant and asked someone "who's the chick in the yellow shirt?" (Yours truly) Pirate John, the interim President of the club, told him who I was and so Kurt said he wanted to meet me to discuss a job opportunity.

Shortly after that, Kurt and I talked and agreed to meet today to discuss his plans and how I might be included.

Next week, I'll become girlonaguzzi on a part time basis since I've accepted his offer to work with/for him on the continuing development of his business. :) My short term and long term responsibilities will include bike sales (after I get lots and lots of exposure to the bikes); merchandising; on-the-road vendor sales/demos; earning my certification for safety instruction and then conducting safety training; conducting mini-workshops on oil changes, tire changes, etc.; and writing/publicizing.

Today, I got my first taste of the Guzzi and thoroughly enjoyed it. Kurt wanted to introduce me to the bikes right away so my first outting was on a Breva 750, a surprisingly powerful and nimble bike. This is a great bike for the entry-level rider or for the less-than-leggy rider. The second ride was on the California Stone 1100, a beefy and surprisingly agile cruiser. I intentionally set out to find open road as well as road with less than satisfactory surfacing and was amazed at how smooth these bikes ran. Buttah, I tell you. Braking and suspension were incredible on both bikes. Moto Guzzi is a little secret waiting to be discovered... and I say that as a rider, not as an employee. :)

Self-loathing Sucks

From Anna Maxted's "Behaving Like Adults":

"When rabbiting on about understanding and forgiveness, it never occurred to me that the same principle might apply to myself. I've always been harder on myself that on others. I presumed that if I wasn't, I'd never get anywhere. I didn't realize that the opposite is also true. If you don't tolerate error in your life, you eventually wilt in the heat of your own self-loathing."

This particular paragraph struck a chord with me considering certain recent conversations. It rings clear with a very simple truth that I need to take to heart.

Paper That Pleases

I just realized that my toilet tissue paper has ridges. Why is that? Is my toilet paper processed for pleasure?

What the Flock?

Yeah, I should be blogging about my life the last couple of weeks, but before I can get to any of that, I gotta talk about a dream I had last night, er, well, this morning. It's real sketchy so I'll only share the main points which are: I walked around town with a pet chicken coddled in my arms. Once I got to this very large, museum-like building, I found a bluejay with its beak stuck into a stone column. The bird was still staged for flight, meaning it didn't get smashed. It looked stuffed... uh, with its beak stuffed into the stone. After looking at it off and on for what seemed like 30 minutes, its eyes slowly blinked. I did nothing but felt sadness. I loved my chicken though.