Close, but No Cigars

We said our goodbyes to Gizmo today before taking the two puppies up to Petco. Ashley said she had a "very good" application for Giz, in a home with two other dogs and she thought it would work out well.

At 3:30, we went back to Petco to pick up Scooby (I was not optimistic about his finding a home today) and discovered that Gizmo had not, in fact, been adopted. The family fell in love with some other puppy and so instead of coming home with only one dog, we brought them both back home again.

Gizmo is ripe for finding a home. Her fur has grown out finally and she's become a real cutie. She loves everybody, is a great cuddler.

We're going to need someone a bit more patient for Scooby, who is still skittish, and slow to warm up. He's OK of you let him come to you, but if you try to approach him, he runs away. He will finally let Walt pet him, if he's in my lap, but if Walt tries to force friendship, he ducks and runs. Heck, even I don't try to lean down and pet him. He's just too scared for that.

So it's one more week without homes for my babies. Maybe we'll have better luck this coming week. In the meantime, the little four-footed family seems happy to be back together again.

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Doing this 65x365 project has memories swirling around in my mind like never before. I decided when I started it that I was NOT going to include people who appear in this journal regularly. So you won't see the Cousins day folk, or Char, or Peggy, or Steve or my family...at least not now. I'm up to posting day #22 (which is definitely an interesting entry!), but I've actually written over 60 entries, just waiting to be posted.

Some people doing this project have grouped their entries into grammar school friends, high school friends, work friends, etc., or other arbitrary group labels. I'm trying to do exactly the opposite. I am trying to mix it up a lot so that you may find someone I knew in grammar school sandwiched in between someone I know today and someone I never really knew, but encountered.

The one thing that surprised me is how many well known people I've met in my life. It's really kind of humbling, in fact. This list isn't just of people I know well (I certainly hope not when I added #22!), but of people I have encountered in one way or another, whether intimately or casually, or just barely. The criterion I set was that it had to be someone with whom I had at least a face-to-face encounter and who left an impression on me. I think you'll see that #22 definitely fits that description.

But when you start mentally checking off people who know and other people you know because of those people, it takes your mind in strange directions and can have surprisingly pleasant results.

I had added a performer I met once to the list and then started thinking about performers in whose presence I have been. That led me back to a taping of The Don Sherwood television show back in the 1950s, sometime (but I never officially "met" Sherwood, so he doesn't go on the list).

That led to checking to see if there was anything on the internet about Don Sherwood and that led to this treasure trove. Those of you who did not live in San Francisco missed out on a lot. Don Sherwood billed himself as "the world's greatest disc jockey." He would not only become the biggest radio star in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years, but would also be the highest paid radio personality in America. His popularity was so great (he had a 25 percent share in his time slot--one in four people were tuned to Sherwood!) that when he left the station, they paid him NOT to work for any other radio station.

But as with most creative geniuses, he had his share of problems, in spades. He was a heavy drinker and he died too early of lung cancer, hooked up to an oxygen tank, and still chain smoking.

I was a young impressionable grammar school kid when I first became a fan of Don Sherwood and I attended Catholic School, so I was really into the power of prayer and offering things up for the betterment of the world.

My mother and I attended the aforementioned taping of the short-lived television show that Sherwood did and he was obviously drunk. And getting drunker as the show progressed. He had a bottle hidden under his desk.

I decided I was going to "save Don Sherwood."

I went away to Lake Tahoe for a couple of weeks with a couple for whom I did babysitting. The thing I longed for each day was the arrival of the mail, but when the mail came, no matter how much I was longing to read the letter(s), I put off reading them until night and offered up my pain and suffering of having to wait a few hours to read my mail in honor of Sherwood quitting drinking. Instead of reading the mail, I would pray for Sherwood.

Amazingly, within a couple of weeks after I returned from Tahoe, Sherwood decided to stop drinking. I don't know how I knew that. I don't know if he mentioned it on his show, or if he went into rehab or what, but all I know is that I was convinced my prayers had "saved" him.

(Of course it didn't last and he was drinking again very soon...but it would be nice to think that all of my sacrifice amounted to something after all!)