Nova, Cucumbers and Life

Meet Nova Leigh.  Tammy's three month old German Shepherd.  Cute, huh?  Don't let her fool you.

 This is what she has done to my back porch.  (WHY did it have to rain THIS weekend???)

 And she dug at least one, if not two green pepper plants right out of my garden!  Not to mention several other holes she has dug in the yard.  And the two flowers she has knocked over.  And the water dish she chewed up. And the scratches and mud all over my back door from her begging to come in. She is lucky to be alive at this point.

BUT I did find my cucumbers!  It was cucumbers that were being hidden by the squash and not zucchini.  I didn't plant zucchini.  See the little yellow flower?  That is the cucumer plant.  It has sent out tendrils to get out from under the squash plant and so I am hoping to get some cucumbers after all.  I have learned a lesson for next year... no squash plants in this tiny garden.  Squash isn't even in the top 10 of my favorite veggies, so it will be no big deal to leave it out.

So, life is about living and learning.  And once you learn a lesson, you shouldn't need to learn it again.  Right?  Well, it always seemed like it should be that way with my kids.  I thought a slap on the wrist should be enough to make them never, ever want to repeat a behavior again.  Ha.  Even after 1,000 slaps, they would still try to get away with it. (Please do not call DHR on me for child abuse.  My children are nearly grown, happy, well-adjusted children).  And not to mention those BIG infractions with BIG consequences.  That was no guarantee of future obedience. 

I see this with the people I work with who are addicted to drugs or alcohol.  For example, I know that withdrawals are horrendous.  One of my dear friends from my previous job described it to me in detail once.  He had to detox in jail, which only added to the "discomfort".  So I wonder... once you have gone through that... faced the natural consequences of your addiction... and it is out of your system.... and it was THAT crappy... why do you want to go and put the drugs in your body again?  It doesn't make sense.

Or why, after you have been in school for 17 years of your life already and know better, would you wait until 2 hours before an assignment is due to start working on it?  And then be surprised when the internet goes down in your house and you have to rush to Starbucks?

Or why do I keep eating crap and not exercising when I KNOW that losing weight means eating better and regular exercise?

We are slow learners.

And we want what we want.

To our own destruction.